Why is nobody happy with regular water anymore?

 It's a bit strange. Three points of data, that suggest a general trend in the populace. I'm a bit concerned.

Though to be fair it is a hobby of sorts for me, this freaking out.

Friend sbk has been drinking bottled water for several year now. It's 'improved' since they bought a house I believe, but generally they have pallets and pallets of plastic bottle water in the car.

More recently, N and SL have been drinking Seltzer a lot. And by a lot I mean a lot a lot a lot. As in, they don't drink regular water anymore, they buy cans of La Croix by the dozens from Costo ("oh it comes out to a bit less than 30 cents a can, so it's not too bad") and just drink it. When I was in Philly last, three weeks ago it was just regular Seltzer, they hadn't gone the path of one of the most premium seltzers yet. Now they're in the upper echelons of fancy water-drinking folks.

Speaking of fancy water, PN have been buying something interesting as well. In their defense it's plain water, and Costco sells them. ON the other hand, it's a 4L jar of bottled water from New Zealand's springs, and it costs only two bucks. The economics of this astounds me. How is it possible to ship that volume for so far away at that price level? Are they filling tankers and tankers of water from NZ, shipping them on giant ships, and bottling them stateside? Because anything else would make very little sense. And it would scare the bezeesus out of me, worries about the environment, carbon footprint and all of that.

Finally, friend SB. Last time I crashed at his place, he'd drink coca cola with every meal. Not that it's been bad necessarily, he works out a lot, probably hasn't had dental issues, and has no other health concerns, but drinking the volume of concentrated sugar solution for every meal...is kinda' iffy to me.

Most tap water is healthy in the U.S. And in places where it's not, putting water through a simple Britta filter or a cheapo electric filter will most certainly clean things up. From a strictly cost perspective, you make your money back with those water purification systems in less than a year. And regular water has no side effects, no acidity, causes no imbalance in the body. And it's actually quite impossible to tell the NZ spring water from regular water.

Why then is nobody happy with regular water anymore?

Hmmm.