I don’t mind occasionally paying for bottled water — if it’s on sale at Costco. It’s just one of those little luxuries that bring a little pleasure to a normal day. Although I strive to save money by making my own iced tea and re-constituting frozen juices (not paying for shipping water by truck is the basic idea), I’ll still sometimes buy a case of whatever bottled water is the least expensive on a per unit basis when I’m in the big box store. Even given that, I knew that I wanted to save a little more during the coronavirus lockdown. I resolved to drink more water. Just plain water out of the kitchen faucet.
For some reason, I’ve always had a bit of a problem doing this. Maybe it’s some kind of character defect. Maybe I’m just being too much of a fancy-pants. But whenever I put plain water from the tap into a drinking glass, I just feel kind of meh. Even if I add ice. I feel like I’m missing something. Sure, it’s not a serious problem, but it’s worth fixing.
I remembered something I read about The Pepsi Challenge and Coca-Cola’s response in Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink”. If you don’t know the story, Pepsi was running a series of television ads that depicted a blind taste test between a cup of Pepsi and a cup of Coke. As shown repeatedly in the ads, people preferred Pepsi more often than they preferred Coke. This rattled the Coca-Cola company so much that they actually changed the taste of Coke, making it more like Pepsi, and creating a disaster. “New Coke” is now known as one of the biggest corporate blunders in American history.
So what does that have to do with an empty bottle of Pellegrino?
Please bear with me.
One of the points Gladwell makes is that the cola-in-paper-cups comparison was unrealistic (and therefore the results were meaningless). People, it turns out, rarely drink cola from small paper cups. In real life, they hold a can or a bottle in their hands. They see it with their eyes. It turns out that the part of the enjoyment comes from the packaging. The feel of the container. The colors and design of the logo. The myriad associations that come along with those things.
I wondered: If I found plain tap water from a drinking glass unpalatable, how would it be if I filled an empty Pellegrino bottle (the 750 ml glass kind) with plain tap water. I did so and put such a bottle of plain tap water into the refrigerator for an overnight cooling. The next day, viola! I actually liked drinking the water from the bottle.
It’s ridiculous, I know. Intellectually I know it’s the same water that I could be drinking from any one of a dozen cups, glasses, or water bottles (the plastic or stainless steel kind) that are stored in my kitchen cabinets. But there’s something about the cold bottle, the green glass, the label, the fact that it came from Italy (I think that’s where the actual Pellegrino water is actually bottled), the way I look when I hold the bottle to my mouth. Who knows? It’s all emotional and subjective. But the results are real. Every day I take my re-filled Pellegrino bottle out of the fridge and drink three-quarters of a liter of plain water that wouldn’t have otherwise consumed.
My case of real Pellegrino is long gone. I haven’t been back to the store since the lockdown began and when we’ve gotten food delivered we haven’t yet ordered any imported bottled water. (We have gotten some seltzer water.) If I had been buying and drinking imported bottled water, at, say. the rate of three bottles a week, that adds up to maybe $15 a month I’ve saved. Pretty good return on something that would have otherwise gone into the trash. (Unfortunately, in my location there is no more curbside glass-recycling pickup.)
A couple other things:
The same thing applies if you are re-constituting powered milk or juice: Put milk made from powered or juice made from frozen concentrate into containers that the “real” item comes in.
When I drink from my bottle, I always “waterfall” it, being careful to not actually touch the bottle to my mouth. This eliminates backwash and makes cleaning easier and makes continued re-use of the bottle much more pleasant to contemplate.
