Water Water Everywhere

So the other day in class a student bought me a bottle of water (very kind). Over the course of the three hours of lecture I drank the entire thing, a full liter. With ten or so minutes left in the class I spun the bottle around by the cap, admiring the marketing marvel that it was (refrigerators for eskimos, that kind of thing). I couldn’t help but wonder how susceptible I, as a consumer, was to the allure of the intoxicating blue-green tint of the bottle and the stylish font of the product name: Dasani. Coke-Cola had given their version of water a more stylish  title to help me purchase it with a greater ease of conscience. Perhaps water exotic enough to be called Dasani has been bottled by monks and hauled out of the mountains by yak caravans, to deliver its mystic healing properties right to my lips.  That stuff that comes out of my tap is just water.

It was actually just after reading the title that my gaze alighted on the small clarifying text below. As an amateur cultural anthropologist, I’ve taken a special joy at looking at the bottled water industry, and before today, my favorite relic has been Propel. Propel Fitness Water has a clarifying statement in small text on each bottle the explains, presumably by fiat of the FDA, that Propel isn’t actually water: its an enhanced water beverage.

What that clever little phrase tells me is that Propel so doctored up that it fails to qualify as water. By that definition, soda-pop and orange juice are enhanced water beverages.  Gatorade (who makes Propel) is engaging in the practice of vague speech that veils truth just enough to seduce a commercial-saturated consumer while ameliorating the demanding FDA (that fundamentalist-by-any-other-name Big Brother agency that is so literalist!) that the marketing industry is famous for.

The funny thing is that any idiot can tell that Propel is not water by a single sip.  Not only is the flavor sweeter and stronger than all of the flavored-water variants on the market, chock full of vitamins and natural dyes, but it also has an aftertaste. The consistency of Propel is actually more viscous than water;  just rolling it around the half empty bottle (a less-than-aqua colored neon blue) reminds me of the liquid-jelly quality of mercury.  And the ingredient list includes– well we’ll just be content to say that water shouldn’t have an ingredient list.

Dasani is a much more effective seduction.  And that’s the perfect word, derived from the latin verb meaning “to lead down and away from truth.”  After the ruse of Propel, I accept more graciously the sea-foam-blue of the bottle and sense that somehow its the color that I’ve always wanted water to be.  And the label with its matching cap are less flamboyant, more dignified, than Propel.  I feel more refined just holding it.  But for all of its luster, and its superior aura to Propel or even Aquafina, Coke-Cola must seethe that its product is water with a strange qualifying statement:   enhanced with minerals for flavor.

A statement like that is to marketing what smelling salts are to consciousness.  I’m at once indignant that Coke thought I could be duped, and annoyed with myself that I enjoyed every last drop.  When I scanned the ingredient list of contents I found that of the three minerals added for flavor, two of them were SALT.  (Perhaps Coke-Cola was banking on the average consumer not recognizing Potassium Sulfide as ordinary table salt).

Now, of all of the varieties of water in the world, bottled and otherwise, there is only one that I can think of that is actually poisonous to humans, a type of water that often seduces thirsty souls with the promise of refreshment, only to turn their systems rancid and kill them with dehydration. Yep, SALT WATER.  Our oceans are filled miles deep with water that is undrinkable.  And seemingly Dasani has managed to market it to thirsty consumers who gladly welcome its refreshment to soda.

Let us hear the end of the matter: from here on out I’m a Pepsi Man.