>dankohn1: Yes, the founder of Juicero has re-emerged: After his juicing company, Juicero, collapsed in September, he went on a 10-day cleanse, drinking nothing but Live Water. “I haven’t tasted tap water in a long time,” he said.... “You have to be agile and tactile, and be available to experiment,” he said. “Literally, you have to carry bottles of water through the dark.”
You have to admit, it’s a brilliant business strategy. First you rip them off with all natural raw water, then you rip them off with all natural dysentery treatments, then the few who are really fools can probably be ripped off again for an all natural raw wood pine box (coffin).
I know it sounds ridiculous, but let's play devil's advocate for a moment: We've evolved drinking "dirty" water until very recent history. It might be that there are some unknown negative effects that come from drinking filtered/purified water. Or some unknown positive health effects of drinking unfiltered water.
It's slowly coming out that modern medicine occasionally gets things wrong and we have to correct our intuitions (sugars, fats, sun exposure), but if you think from a simple evolutionary perspective, these things often make a lot of sense.
I'm not drinking unfiltered water, but there's some potential rationale behind it.
To reinforce the point made by 'katrielalex - we drink purified water not because it's a fad, but because we know - and this is where medicine is not wrong - that things in dirty water cause illness and death. To outweigh that, our medicine would have to miss some serious health risks of filtered water - big enough that we would surely notice them by now.
In general, I feel that a lot of sympathy for those "natural" things stem from not bothering to put a numeric value on actual risks and benefits involved. Getting a 0.01% risk of cancer from an "unnatural" habit beats the hell out of getting 10% risk of death from a disease that this habit prevents.
Another point is that these days, we pollute the environment much more than in the past; "raw water" of today is often full of industrial waste products, so in a way our own civilization forces us to filter it.
You have to account for the fact that before modern filtration civilizations developed other ways to make water safe to drink, like brewing beer and boiling water for tea.
And you can't win that argument in the face of hard facts.
Poorer countries don't have the luxury to drink filtered water. And you know how many of those populations die of diseases from such 'holy spring water'.
The most hilarious part about the "unfiltered water" fad, to me, is that it probably has a bunch of hipsters drinking industrial run-off and many of the same chemicals they rally against.
That's not to say I disagree with them about industry destroying water supplies or poisoning us with various poorly-understood chemicals. It's just the lack of self awareness that I find amusing.
Yup. And I don't for a second buy that this "raw water" isn't in reality some industrial-grade tap water or sourced from whatever lake they could get access to cheaply.
So the headline here had me focus on something that annoyed me. Oh and I should say, I'm neither Silicon Valley based or elite or interested in water beyond the normal scope of human survival :P
The implication "Silicon Valley elites" and that wonderful play in to confirmation bias that they're all out of touch, cash flushed weirdos, like that's just something people kind of want to believe especially in comment sections with article like these. And ok so I'm not setting out to disprove this, but this article and the one it links doesn't do the opposite either.
It makes some really spurious claims.
1. I'm going to ignore the price thing here, because it seems to be heavily reliant on one store just arbitrarily jacking up the price.
2. Silicon valley elites = The Juicero guy. And pretty much only the Juicero guy. He's the only one named and the only one that talks about it to anyone. There is a landscaper from Emeryville, but I'm going to claim that "elite" is probably not something they're going for.
3. "Flying off the shelves" The atribution for this is one store in San Deigo that opened three years ago. It's heavily dependent on these two paragraphs
"And Liquid Eden, a water store that opened in San Diego three years ago, offers a variety of options, including fluoride-free, chlorine-free and a “mineral electrolyte alkaline” drinking water that goes for $2.50 a gallon.
Trisha Kuhlmey, the owner, said the shop sells about 900 gallons of water a day, and sales have doubled every year as the “water consciousness movement” grows."
4. You can find "movements" for anything. Both articles talk about "raw" water movement like its this huge thing that is sweeping the bay area and will consume you all.
So I'm not saying this is definitely wrong, but it just looks like that business insider took one article of little value and several barely linked claims to come up with the title of
"Silicon Valley elites are spending $60 for less than 3 gallons of dangerous, unfiltered water — and it's flying off the shelves"
I mean the concept is stupid, but the articles talking about it doesn't feel like its doing much better.
The full glass jug is $60; refills are $15. That's expensive, but probably in line with what people are willing to pay for smaller plastic bottles of water.
I spent nearly all my life drinking raw water, and my parents before me, also the entire population of the village I'm born, and no one ever got any disaese like collera or epatite, we use to drink tap water from the village fountain, or go to the mountain to take the tap water from there (because it taste better). I'm. Not saying raw water is safe, but some sources of raw water are proved safe.
And pay for raw water is definitely stupid, we drink it because is free
Water from a mountain spring or creek tends to be clean enough to drink. I personally never treat the water if I am in the mountains and far from civilization (live in Colorado) even though there is still a chance I could get sick. However I will always treat that same water with iodine if it is sitting in a lake/pond or close to civilization because the likelihood of disease goes up significantly.
So, we already have organic soap, probably also toothpaste, raw milk is a thing, as is bottled mountain air.
What about raw clothes? Growing 3-4 sheeps, getting the fur, and making some clothes with medieval technology. But because we're not savages, let's leave the leather products out.
Throw in some natural colorants and "no chemicals" anywhere.
I bet you could sell this stuff for some real money.
I had to look that one up, but yes, it is real. This is also artisanal air, made with love: "It's a long and tedious process, you know. We sit in Banff for about 10 hours capturing the air and then after that we bring it back and we have to fill it into these bottles individually."
If they are drinking pure water from the well or spring, provided it was taken in pristine environment, it should be better then regular "clean" water. That is what concept of "mineral water" is, you get water directly from the ground, usually with some health benefits.
Sometimes you get 'mineral water' packaged from retailer, but if you go to place where it originates, you can get it from the well. Microelements you get in that water is something you will not ever get in regular water and it is good for your body and brains, within reason. Drinking it exclusively will not be good for your kidneys I guess, but it is not intended for that.
I wish reportes would not hype this as much and explain if there is genuine issue in how this water is getting collected, there might be genuine issues, but it is hard to understand where the problem is and this is not the first article I read.
The only water available to me is well water and I do prefer to fill up several Aquatainers at a local spring, but it's just water to me.
There are seasons where the springs around me appear to "flunk" the drinking standards compared to treated, but not to a level where there's levels of ecoli, giardia, etc. Check for standing water around the site, research tests or get it tested yourself, spring water is fine, but obviously I wouldn't recommend anyone who's elderly or vulnerable to disease to drink from any random "spring."
It's quite puzzling to see the rich paying out the ass for something those without municipal water, and the poor, have ritualized and get for free. I'm sure there's public access and tested springs only a quick drive from San Jose, so it is amusing.
> Rainbow Grocery was sold out of its Fountain of Truth spring water
Although it's currently the zeitgeist to mock "Silicon Valley elites" at every opportunity, Rainbow Grocery in SF is cut from the same cloth as Berkeley Bowl in the East Bay, i.e. serving the wealthy hippies that have lived in Berkeley (and to a lesser extent the rest of the Bay) for many decades. Some of those made their money from tech in SV, many did not.
While I'm sure the author had a fit of ecstasy when they found that the Jucero CEO was a fan of this product, this really has little to do with "Silicon Valley elites"; this is the same extreme hippie contingent that oppose vaccination (the hint is in the product name: "Fountain of Truth" is clearly marketed at spritualists not technologists).
I wonder if there's a market for a company that analyzes the mineral makeup of different cities'/regions' tap water, and sells an on-faucet water softener/filter that can be configured with different "mineral pods" to match the water taste of your preferred region.
New Yorker living in Texas? Don't worry, you can still get that great NY Watershed taste coming right from your tap!
> People — including failed startup Juicero's cofounder Doug Evans — are gathering gallons of untreated water from natural springs, venturing out onto private property by night to get the water.
I am wondering, are there any rules/regulations for drawing water from a natural resource and selling it commercially? Because if there aren't any, wont that that lead to exploitation.
New York City tap water was unfiltered until recently, so I'd guess if it was a problem for kidneys we'd have heard about it.
Note that I said unfiltered, not untreated. It was treated with ultraviolet, chlorine, fluoride, orthophosphate (inhibits lead contamination from pipes) and sodium hydroxide (reduces acidity).
"cane sugar" is cane sugar, because sugar can come from a few sources, including cane and beet. Most of the white sugar you know is either from cane or beet and it's generally glucose. Another sugar, fructose, is fruit sugar, or grape sugar, which is dextrose - they are all "sugar".
Indicating the (near) exact type of sugar is not a bad idea.
Sugar beets account for about 20% of sugar production, so it's not unlikely you've had non-cane sugar. Still no real reason to label it as cane sugar though.
Until the idea captures attention of some marketing people, who will spread the fad further, and suddenly your mother is drinking arsenic-laced dysentery by gallons, based on recommendation of her friend or the most recent article she read on the Internet.
You know what else is full of arsenic? Rice, especially brown rice, and especially American brown rice. Lots of people are telling your mother to eat brown rice, and I don't see you all up in arms.
Unfiltered Fervor: The Rush to Get Off the Water Grid | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16040540
>dankohn1: Yes, the founder of Juicero has re-emerged: After his juicing company, Juicero, collapsed in September, he went on a 10-day cleanse, drinking nothing but Live Water. “I haven’t tasted tap water in a long time,” he said.... “You have to be agile and tactile, and be available to experiment,” he said. “Literally, you have to carry bottles of water through the dark.”