Austin bottled water survey

After getting Paul Mason's email today on spring water, I headed down to Central Market in search of one of the two recommended, high potassium spring waters. I brought along a printout of 156 spring waters so I could evaluate each spring water based on the criteria in the "Bottled Waters from Around the World" web site.

Central Market didn't have either Adobe Springs or Vichy Novelle, which were the two bottled waters that met the criteria of having at least 90mg/ Liter magnesium, not more than a 2:1 ratio of Calcium/Magnesium and less than 10 mg/L sodium.

They did have quite a few mineral/spring waters that weren't on the list, so I took notes and threw a few samples in the grocery basket. It's going to be a bit of work adding these to the database and then doing a similar survey at 3-4 of the other large natural foods stores in town but we should have some results to publish soon. There were brands like Ice Age, Pellegrino, Miracle Water, Sole, Rim Rock, Rainbow Squeezer, TY NANT, Tipperary, Canfields, and Acqua Mia that weren't on the list I got from Paul Mason.

One brand, LaCroix, advertises the following mg/liter: Magnesium 39, Calcium 65, Chlorides 3, Potassium 0, Dissolved Solids 250 ppm and a pH of 7.4.