Many top restaurants take a perverse pride in serving only bottle water, as if anything from the tap is filled with ghosts and cholera. [Here in Peru, it actually is.] But for uberchef Alice Waters, it’s now adios to Evian in her very chic Chez Panisse restaurant. After twisting “24,000 bottles,” Ms. Waters is simply “over” the self-importance (not to mention the pollution) stemming from store-bought H2O, preferring to offer her patrons filtered Bay Area tap. Even in fickle Los Angeles, several high end eateries (including Mario Batali’s new pizzeria) have installed filters and ditched the pricey Italian imports.

Few people realize that bottled water – as a “food” – is regulated by the FDA and not by the significantly more stringent Environmental Protection Agency, as tap water is. In fact, a 1995 study by the NRDC found that over a third of water brands contained “significant” bacterial or chemical contamination, while Consumer Reports rated LA’s water “flawless” and New York Magazine said it was “exceptional.” Good work LA DWP!

Tap water (maybe with a little filtering to remove any residual chlorine taste) is simply a better option than anything you can buy in a store. It’s cheap, it’s safer, and its global footprint (both in packaging and shipping) is minimal. The barely-regulated, glass-bottled, shipped-all-the-way-from-France eau ... not so much.

Link to LA Times Food

Popularity: 9% [?]

Digg this | Hugg this

See Also: Solar Water Purification,Water Politics: Just How Important is H2O?,Tide Coldwater Detergent,

This entry was posted by Jeffrey Goodman on Friday, May 25th, 2007 at 9:49 am and is filed under Environment, Social Change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.