Just How Suggestible?
People are uniformly given to believing what they want to believe, most particularly when a whopping, hugely-funded advertising campaign is launched to convince them that something is "cool" - and everyone wants to be cool. Ally that with assurances that the human body requires continual hydration for ultimate health and physical performance and you've achieved a great formula for credible suasion.
Everyone's uniform these days includes a bottle of water. People walk, run, amble, hop, slip and slither to their destinations hanging on to their comfort blankie, that ubiquitous water bottle. Is it a bit of a nuisance to continually have to visit the rest room to micturate? Well, that's how it goes, can't get around without water. Water from the tap? Heaven forfend, that's only for those who (sniff-sniff) cannot afford the cachet of name-brand H20.
Sure, there've been those enlightened souls, amused by the fervid trust in the powers of constant hydration who inform the public that the moisture the body receives through the normal daily intake of food and drink is more than sufficient to restore that working machine to top order. And only if engaging in hard physical labour, or extensive recreational sports would one require additional hydration.
And bottled water? the skeptics scoffed, forget it. Most of it is only water taken from municipally-treated water systems to begin with, despite those labels illustrating sylvan streams, or melting icebergs. Furthermore, there have been greater amounts of harmful contaminants discovered in bottled water than water taken directly from the tap. Still, committed water-bottle-babies don't listen to all that habit-deleterious stuff.
And let's face it, this has turned out to be big business. At one time it was only bottlers like Perrier, presenting sparkling water for discriminating tastes. Bottlers of colas realized they were missing a beat there, and began to enter the bottled water production-stream and they haven't looked back since. And the public relations and advertising schemes they've launched; it's enough to make P.T. Barnum blush.
Like sneaky suggestions that municipally-treated water, the water that gushes out of one's kitchen and bathroom taps isn't really all that healthy for you. Sodden with chlorine and all matter of health-disturbing sediments, chemicals and organic compounds. But there's a handy alternative, and that's their offerings of (patent-protected) designer bottled water. Pure, unadulterated, all the harmful solids removed.
The health-conscious, the image-deranged, the fitness-compelled, the "cool" crowd all responded with a resounding YESSS!
Hey, what gives? PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and their respective trade names are at last coming clean; their bottled water is in fact our household water, simply run through a reverse osmosis procedure to dissolve solids. Something, in fact, that our household tap with its carbon-filter attachment also does.
But wait a minute, if these huge corporations are taking tap water that the taxpayer is paying for filtering and cleansing to produce their designer label bottled water, isn't that great taxpayer base paying through the nose for a product many of us aren't interested in using, leaving the committed bottled-water crowd to pay twice?
I know it sounds kind of unreasonable, but mightn't we expect these multi-billion-dollar enterprises to pay their own way? No sweetheart deals with municipalities, please, kindly stiff it to them just the way the taxpayer must needs fund the infrastructure and the mechanical means by which our water is made completely potable and safe.
I sound a little cranky, I know, but I resent funding an international scam of these huge proportions. And I'm not at all amused that so many people are so completely gullible that they place themselves willingly in the hands of these sly manipulators - oops, of course I mean entrepreneurs.
Hey, not on my dime, OK?
Everyone's uniform these days includes a bottle of water. People walk, run, amble, hop, slip and slither to their destinations hanging on to their comfort blankie, that ubiquitous water bottle. Is it a bit of a nuisance to continually have to visit the rest room to micturate? Well, that's how it goes, can't get around without water. Water from the tap? Heaven forfend, that's only for those who (sniff-sniff) cannot afford the cachet of name-brand H20.
Sure, there've been those enlightened souls, amused by the fervid trust in the powers of constant hydration who inform the public that the moisture the body receives through the normal daily intake of food and drink is more than sufficient to restore that working machine to top order. And only if engaging in hard physical labour, or extensive recreational sports would one require additional hydration.
And bottled water? the skeptics scoffed, forget it. Most of it is only water taken from municipally-treated water systems to begin with, despite those labels illustrating sylvan streams, or melting icebergs. Furthermore, there have been greater amounts of harmful contaminants discovered in bottled water than water taken directly from the tap. Still, committed water-bottle-babies don't listen to all that habit-deleterious stuff.
And let's face it, this has turned out to be big business. At one time it was only bottlers like Perrier, presenting sparkling water for discriminating tastes. Bottlers of colas realized they were missing a beat there, and began to enter the bottled water production-stream and they haven't looked back since. And the public relations and advertising schemes they've launched; it's enough to make P.T. Barnum blush.
Like sneaky suggestions that municipally-treated water, the water that gushes out of one's kitchen and bathroom taps isn't really all that healthy for you. Sodden with chlorine and all matter of health-disturbing sediments, chemicals and organic compounds. But there's a handy alternative, and that's their offerings of (patent-protected) designer bottled water. Pure, unadulterated, all the harmful solids removed.
The health-conscious, the image-deranged, the fitness-compelled, the "cool" crowd all responded with a resounding YESSS!
Hey, what gives? PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and their respective trade names are at last coming clean; their bottled water is in fact our household water, simply run through a reverse osmosis procedure to dissolve solids. Something, in fact, that our household tap with its carbon-filter attachment also does.
But wait a minute, if these huge corporations are taking tap water that the taxpayer is paying for filtering and cleansing to produce their designer label bottled water, isn't that great taxpayer base paying through the nose for a product many of us aren't interested in using, leaving the committed bottled-water crowd to pay twice?
I know it sounds kind of unreasonable, but mightn't we expect these multi-billion-dollar enterprises to pay their own way? No sweetheart deals with municipalities, please, kindly stiff it to them just the way the taxpayer must needs fund the infrastructure and the mechanical means by which our water is made completely potable and safe.
I sound a little cranky, I know, but I resent funding an international scam of these huge proportions. And I'm not at all amused that so many people are so completely gullible that they place themselves willingly in the hands of these sly manipulators - oops, of course I mean entrepreneurs.
Hey, not on my dime, OK?
posted by Pieface @ 5:10 PM
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