Mineral Water Myths cont...

Myth 4 - It's also worth looking at spring water bottling practices. Most spring waters are not bottled at the source. Instead, the product is pumped into large tanker trucks for transportation to a bottling facility at another location. While the water is in the tanker truck, health regulations actually require the water to be chlorinated, exactly as municipal tap water supplies are chlorinated, as a protection against bacterial contamination.

At this point, these spring waters are virtually indistinguishable from tap water. Once the water reaches the bottling facility, a carbon filtering process is typically used to remove chlorine before bottling. However, most other impurities remain in the water. By no means could this water be considered "pure."

Myth 5 - Mineral waters are also subject to many of the same misconceptions as spring waters. However, in some cases the marketing of these products can be even more misleading. The term "mineral water" logically seems to suggest that the product contains large amounts of beneficial minerals. In reality, a review of the actual amounts present shows that the quantities of things like calcium and magnesium are typically quite small - in most cases less than 1% of the Recommended Daily Allowance per serving.