Water paranoia

In the mid seventies, "Mad Magazine" put a picture on its back inside cover of a "scene we love to see." It was a friendly milkman delivering a bottle of milk to the stoop of a home in an idyllic neighborhood.

On the back outside cover was a "scene we'd hate to see." It was of two other delivery men delivering bottles of "clean water" and "fresh air" to the same stoop. In the ecologically-awakening nineteen seventies, this was being done for laughs, since few ever imagined Americans paying for clean water and fresh air.

Fast forward to today, when water is the number one selling beverage in the country, and air purifiers hum in millions of homes. The Mad jokesters weren't too far off.

Could it be that modern water paranoia is creating a self-fulfilling prophesy? Are we undermining our treasured national water supply by bypassing the tap on the way to the water bottle?

After all, America's tap water is the envy of the world. It's just as safe and, in some cases, even safer than bottled water. It's held to higher standards than bottled water, and tested for contaminants much more often.

You can find out details about your own water supply from a search site such as the one at the Environmental Working Group, a watchdog organization or from American Water Works Association which represents municipal water companies.

On a whim, I searched for a water quality report for a major U.S. city. I found an incredibly detailed analysis of the municipal tap water in Oklahoma City that beats anything I'd find about Aquafina bottled water (which is nothing more than filtered tap water).

Sometimes, the pricey bottled water we're buying is actually just tap water in disguise. You can filter your own water at home just as thoroughly as the Big Boys at Coke and Pepsi do buy installing a countertop water filter in your kitchen.

Home-filtered water reaches your faucet mostly via gravity, not trucking or shipping, so it comes with no greenhouse gas-producing strings attached. Nothing "Mad" about that.

ifeWire provides original and syndicated content to web publishers. Jay Weinstein, a chef trained at the Culinary Institute of America, is a New York based food writer, editor, and cookbook author. His food articles and recipes have been featured in The New York Times, Travel & Leisure, Newsday, Time Out New York, National Geographic Traveler, and numerous other publications. His latest book, The Ethical Gourmet, focuses on ecologically sustainable fine foods. He's currently working on a book about sustainable use of water.