So remember "raw water"? Yeah, it's actually tap water from Oregon that some dude is selling for $64. Shockingly, there are zero health benefits: https://t.co/7Dj949Ry64 #eattherich
— Ej Dickson (@ejdickson) January 5, 2018
Thank Murphy the Trickster God for consumer-oriented media:
… Live Water makes it look like its product has been skimmed off the surface of a magical mountain spring. Founder Mukhande Singh lives in Hawaii, and you can find him on Instagram filling glass orbs from natural water sources trickling down over jungle vegetation, or from PVC pipes protruding from springs just below the ground. Singh—whose birth name is Christopher Sanborn—says he’s personally drunk from “hundreds” of natural springs and has never gotten sick. His company’s site even includes a link to findaspring.com, a website for water gatherers to find naturally occurring water sources.
When raw water first started going viral, a number of other outlets reported on the dangers of collecting your drinking water directly from a spring. Given the potential health risks, we wanted to find out exactly where “Fountain of Truth” comes from.
On its website, Live Water says it’s sourced from Opal Springs, Oregon, a natural spring at the bottom of a canyon near the small city of Madras. So we called Jonathan Modie, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Public Health, to ask what kind of water “collecting” goes on at Opal Springs.
Modie said that Opal Springs was fed by an aquifer that was able to meet all the standards for public consumption without treatment, and that the water was distributed by the Deschutes Valley Water District, a nonprofit utility company that’s been in business since 1919. When we called the Deschutes Valley Water District to ask how bottling companies like Live Water get water from the spring. They made it clear that no, Singh isn’t down at the bottom of the Opal Springs Canyon dunking his $33 1 gallon globes in by hand like he does on his Instagram.
“They all like to sorta imply that they’re filling bottles right outta Opal Springs,” Edson Pugh, the general manager, told me. “They are not down at our spring bottling directly from the source. It’s the same water that we’re serving our customers.”
In other words, Live Water’s pricey “Fountain of Truth” is just the tap water from Jefferson County, which residents get piped into their homes for about one-third of a cent per gallon.
When we asked Live Water to confirm this, Singh was open about it…
Because transparency is a key metric for the highly awakened demographic in search of The Next Big “Health” Product!
we brought back measles, we brought back whooping cough, let's see, we need a bigger challenge, time for DYSENTERY #rawwater
— What duck? (@geeoharee) January 3, 2018
I just wish I could find the tweet pointing out that getting Silicon Valley tech bros to pay a premium for a potentially deadly product, for fear of being seen consuming the same water as common poor people, was in itself a peculiarly 2017 form of genius…
Good News — At Least Some “Raw Water” Is Perfectly Safe to Drink!Post + Comments (84)