"You stupid or something? Read the fucking label", sincerely, PepsiCo & Coca-Cola

This is old news, but there are lot of people who may not know and still keep buying into the bottled water scam. Check the recent Economist article.

"SO THE emperor really isn't wearing any clothes. Last week PepsiCo announced that the label on its Aquafina brand of bottled water will soon carry the words "public water source", instead of simply the innocent looking "P.W.S.". That's right: Aquafina is to all intents and purposes tap water. Coca-Cola is under pressure to follow suit with its Dasani brand, though so far it is refusing to do so. "We don't believe that consumers are confused about the source of Dasani water," Diana Garza Ciarlante, a Coca-Cola spokeswoman, said. "The label clearly states that it is purified water."

No doubt Coca-Cola still remembers what happened in Britain in 2004, when the press made a stink over the fact that Dasani was simply filtered tap water. The company became a laughing stock, as readers were reminded of an episode of a popular TV comedy, "Only Fools and Horses". In it Del Boy, a decidedly dodgy businessman, decides to bottle tap water, selling it as "Peckham Spring", named after the unprepossessing inner-London borough. No sooner had the initial furore died down than Coca-Cola discovered that some of the water had been contaminated betwixt tap and bottle, and decided to admit defeat. Dasani was axed in Britain a mere five weeks after it was launched."

More like this

Maybe I'm not the right person to bring this message as I drink very little in the way of fluids each day, at least compared to my students who will, I am sure, have to be surgically removed from their water bottles. Of course I've also had kidney stones twice, so I'm not suggesting anyone do as I…
How many times have you seen pallets of bottled water coming off the forklift at the grocery store, and felt your stomach turning in disgust? Never? Not once? That's not enough! You should be sick. When you see soccer coaches and construction workers throwing cases of little plastic water bottles…
News on the benzene-in-softdrinks front (for background see here, here, here, here, here and the Environmental Working Group site). The dominoes are starting to fall and the first was a big one, Coca Cola: Consumer lawyers and The Coca-Cola Company announced today a legal settlement involving…
                 Coca-Cola sucks India dry.      Image: Carlos Latuff / Wikimedia CommonsThe marketing executive who came up with Coca-Cola's popular slogan in 1908 most likely never expected it would be taken so literally. However, a hundred years ago there probably weren't many who imagined a…