Food Theory: Is Expensive Water Actually WORTH It? (Taste Test)

The water in this bottle is 14 times more  expensive than the water in this bottle. 14 times! And yet it's supposedly selling the exact same  thing: Water. At 14 times more expensive you'd be hoping for, like, gold leaf to be floating  around inside of here or something. But nope, nothing. Just plain old water. Clearly, this  has got to be some sort of a gimmick, right? Well, that's what I plan to test today. Is the  clear, flavorless, odorless liquid we call water the same, no matter whether it

's coming from a  square bottle or a cylindrical one? And when you spend more on a bottle of water, does that rich  water actually taste expensive? Drink it all in theorists. By the end of today's episode,  your thirst for answers shall be quenched. Hello Internet! Welcome to Food Theory. The  channel that's always sparkling and never still. We've talked a lot on this channel about  various beverages: sodas, tea, coffee. Heck, we even tried olive oil mixed into coffee. Still hate  you Starbucks

for forcing us to do that one. But there's one drink that we've critically ignored  over the years of Food Theory, and that is water. Outside of the one episode where we tested  whether you could predict the temperature of water just from listening to it pour (spoiler alert you can), water has been a pretty infrequent subject on the channel. And it's  not hard to see why, right? It's water. There's nothing much to say about it. Clear, odorless,  making up 70% of the surface of planet earth. H2O

is kind of the G.O.A.T of planet earth  beverages, but it's not particularly flashy. And yet, over the last two decades, bottled  water has really exploded onto the scene to capitalize off of our collective thirst. In 2020  alone, the U.S. bottled water industry generated approximately $22 billion in revenue. Billion  with a B, just for water! When I was a kid, you drank from the tap and you liked it. If you were lucky, you got to drink from the garden hose. But now water has become  so ubiquito

us, it's starting to feel like a fashion accessory. It is a matter of taste and  of class. There are even trendy waters out there. I mean, just wrap your head around that;  trendy water. And of course, that also is going to come with a huge range of prices. A typical bottle of water today can cost anywhere between $0.50 and $5. So I just got  to know, is it worth it? If you actually drank all the different brands of bottled water blind,  could you legitimately tell which one came from a natural

spring out in the French Alps and which  was bottled by the spigot out back of Coke HQ? Can your palate actually distinguish between  different brands of water? And if so, does the more expensive water actually taste  any better? Today we're making Stay Hydrated Bot proud by tasting six of the major  mainstream water options out there back to back to back to back, to determine once  and for all who is the baron of the bottle, the sultan of the still, the leader of the  liquid. TL;DW we did a sci

entific experiment to determine what the best bottled waters  are. And I'm going to tell you right now, the differences were moist and critical. So to  do this, the team obviously had to put together a taste test for Steph and I to do; a taste test  of water, which in concept is just really stupid. This is pretty insane. Now that we’re sitting here  on the couch doing it. It's pretty stupid. *laugh* That's what we aim to figure out here today,  folks. We're going to take six of the most common b

rands of bottled water, ranging from  expensive top of the line artisanal brands, to your cheap everyday options that you'd find  in most vending machines. And then Steph and I are going to conduct a blind taste test to  see if these fancy brands, pardon the pun, hold any water. It's also worth noting that we  did this experiment using room temperature water, not because we forgot to make room in  our fridge, but because that will help make sure that we're truly able to taste  all the subtle dif

ferences in the water. Believe it or not but temperature actually matters  a lot when you're talking about the flavor of stuff like water. Cold water actually suppresses  your taste buds. And for this experiment, we didn't want to hinder our ability to taste  the minerals and slight differences of flavor. But that said, do Steph and I have the most  refined aquatic palates or are our taste buds all washed up? Let's dive in. All right. That's Matthew, picking his teeth. That is me picking my teet

h. So I'll swish  it around later when I'm enveloping myself in the bouquet of these various waters.  So, Santi, take us through the experiment. Yeah. What are we doing? Well, really wish I hadn't heard that, first of all. Second of all, in this first round,  you have six different brands of water in the cups in front of you. Yes. You don't know the brand. What you'll  be doing is drinking from each cup, figuring out if you can taste any differences, and  if you even have a favorite out of these

. And then you'll be ordering them from right to left, from  cheapest to most expensive-st. This then at the end of the round it will tell you how close you  got and there will be another round after this, which we’ll explain what we get there. So we're tasting the richness of the water. Sure. The thing is, there are no wrong answers here, Stephanie. This is a water taste test. You're  responding to what your palate is telling you. Yeah, but I'm just going to put them in any old  order because I

don't think I'll be able to know. There's no competition here.  This is a welcoming space. *Steph panic noise* All right, let's do it. Santi, how are you going to respond to everyone's comments on this experimental  design when everyone's like, “they're in different colors and so the colors are  going to affect the way you perceive the flavor”? So they are wrong. I’ll drink to that. Down the hatch. Ayooooo, cheers. I I don't know, it tastes like water. Boop Smell the bouquet. *laughing* Smellin

g water. I don't know if this is true or not. This is the  flavor that I don't like about Aquafina. Or like, this is the sort of thing that I don't  like about Aquafina, it’s been a long time. Slightly cucumbery on the front. Don't think  I care for that one as much, but like, I still don't care strongly. I don't know. Blue, The color of water. Still no smell. But I'm going to  continue to do this the whole time. It's mellow all throughout. It's mellow, right? That note. Somehow that's a descrip

tor. Right? It's smooth. Boop. Purple. This one has a pretty, like, sharp bitter flavor  up front. Actually. for water. I don't know. it's like plastic-y. Is it possible that I'm going to make myself sick by drinking all  this water? My stomach is like, “Why are you so hydrated right now? That's not normal.” Okay. Orange. Oh, yeah. No, actually, this is really bad. It's very metallic. I don't like it. Yeah, this is really bad. OK here  we go. Feel like I need to clean my palate every time. But i

t's all water. Oh, no, this will clean your palate. Ooh, that is nice. Yeah. There's nothing in this. This is nice I think there’s nothing in this. I taste wet. I remember when Fiji Water at  least first hit the market or I first became aware of it in high school. There was a kid in my  choir who would only drink Fiji water because it was the purest of the waters and he insisted on  it. He insisted on it so completely that it was this pure, unadulterated water that he would  open the bottle and

then pour it into his… He would not let his lips touch the bottle.  He would pour it into his mouth. So that way he would not taint the purity of this water. On the left. The cheapest water you both got correct with Aquafina. The next one you put also  got correct, and that is Dasani in the orange. You started off strong, but the third one is actually  the red with the star, and the brand is Evian. Really? Oh no. We have boujee taste. The next one up is Purple and  SmartWater is the brand in the

re. We did… So, Stephanie, you actually got that correct. Oh, yeah. Wait, no, I thought Blue was  SmartWater. I want to take this victory. But… You were half right because you  did put it fourth in your lineup. Okay. And then the final two, we have Fiji in the blue and Voss in the green. Good job with Fiji. You called that one. I called the Fiji. I biffed it on Aquafina hard. So Voss on average comes in at about $16.99 for a six pack. Oh, wow. For water? Fiji actually comes in at $15.99, SmartWa

ter  at $12.99, Evian at about $12 flat/$11.99 and Dasani at $3.79 for a six pack and Aquafina for  $3.29. So both at the bottom range are the $3. Wow. This is making me rethink a lot of stuff.  I'm also mending my relationship with Aquafina. It seems like it, you guys have  come to terms with each other. There's healing that's  happening here in this moment. Three things quickly became clear from that  first round of tasting. One, that different bottled waters clearly have different flavors  th

at you can taste. Two, that you can taste a bit of the price difference between those  waters. That's how Steph and I were able to roughly predict the prices that were on the higher  range things versus the lower range. And finally, three, Steph and I clearly had some favorites  that immediately stood out from the pack. Ooh, that is nice. On the other side of the spectrum, Dasani. I don't know if this is the least expensive,  but it is by far the worst tasting. But why did we have such a polariz

ing  take across these two specifically? Well, Evian’s water is what's known as natural spring  water. Which, while it certainly sounds like some corporate gobbledygook, actually has itself an  official definition. The makers, or should I say bottlers of Evian, are in the business of keeping  the water in as natural a state as possible. So when it snows on the mountaintops above the  French town of Evian-Les-Bains it starts to melt and seep down into the ground, flowing downwards  towards the ba

se of the slope. As it flows, it picks up all sorts of natural minerals  and electrolytes, like calcium, magnesium and bicarbonates. These mineralized waters eventually  flow into a stream outside the town where they're more or less bottled at the source and then  shipped to hotel refrigerators the world over. So really there is some substance for why this  water is so much better than some of the other contenders. They didn't just call it Evian because  it was naive spelled backwards. Millennia

l Me actually blames the movie Reality Bites for  popularizing that theory; that Food Theory. Evian is naive spelled backwards. In reality, Evian is just named after the town  where the water comes from. Dasani meanwhile, is a little bit less… elegant, shall we  say. Dasani, which is owned by Coca-Cola, buys up any sort of lake or stream out there and  is like, “Yeah, it's mostly clean.” Of course, those waters are not mostly clean, especially  when compared to the pure spring water of Evian. If

they tried to just bottle that water, it  would end up tasting worse than coke starlight. Tastes like dirt So instead they need to go in and do several  rounds of filtering. This isn't the natural sort of filtering that's happening in the French  Alps, though. They use their industrial might to filter everything out of the water. And I  do mean everything. What they're left with is basically pure water. Now that sounds like  it should make it even more of a pure flavor than Evian, but that's no

t actually a good thing. It turns out the purer the water, the more bland the flavor. Might be good enough for Aquafina, but  not for the likes of Daddy Coke. Coke is in the business of making things taste good, so they add  a bunch of minerals in artificially so it tastes like what people expect water to taste like. But  to Steph and I in this blind comparison, all the extra effort they put in to make the water taste  better just made it taste more like backwash. Turns out the process of removi

ng all the  sweet, sweet minerals and then artificially trying to ram them back in just doesn't sit  well with the two of us. But at this point, Steph and I were feeling pretty darn confident  we could sniff out, or rather taste out, the best from the rest. Which led us into  round two and our team's not so fun prank. All right, Santi, hit us up. What do  you got in store for us for round two? You already know the brands. You know the  general price range. What you're going to do now: you're goi

ng to go through, taste every single cup  again and see if you can guess the order of price. So basically redo what we just did, but  having the knowledge of what everything is. So I think my strategy here is knock out  the ones that I feel like I should be able to identify. Exactly. It's making me second guess everything. I'm doing eyes closed. I have to go slower. Hold on. I know right? We're rushing through it. All of a sudden we're like, “We've got  to go, we've got to go, we've got to go”.

It’s kinda like, “I’m going to get it,  right now!” Let's be methodical. Start here. Yes. I don't really taste anything with  this one. So it's either Fiji or Evian. All right. What's next? Green. Green How are you not swallowing so much air? I know how to consume beverages. I'm  the sewer. Stephanie. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live within me. What is going on? I don't taste anything here either. Santi’s pulling a mind game on us. Are these all the same? These  are not different waters. They h

ave to be. The previous experiment, there  was distinctive differences. This one does not have that. And also different textures. So this is where I'm going to cut in and say this was in fact a placebo  round. These are all the same water. I like that I'm still drinking them just to  prove the point. I didn't say final answer. Deer Park! Deer Park. A new contender enters the field. Was this in  the last round? It was not. That's why I couldn't place any of them. Right? You shysters. Santi though

t he was going to be slick. He was going to play some mind games,  trick us into drinking the same water six times. But it's going to take a lot more than party  tricks to pull a prank on the Patricks. But what that showed us was that the flavor  differences weren't just happening in our mind. We were actively tasting them on our tongue.  So with that little control test out of the way, it was time to move on to our final round. Round number three, I'm assuming, based on the fact that you have e

xposed the brands to  us and that we're presented with another round of six cups. We're going to match? Are  we playing a game of matchy-match here? So what you're going to do is, now knowing how  each brand kind of tastes. See if that factors into your decision making here. So you'll be  tasting everyone and try to order them in the correct order. Okay. Yeah, I think there's still Aquafina. You think so? I know you're going off in the bubbles. No, I'm going off of the after-taste too. Are you?

feel it in your mouth. Metallicy. mineraly. I'm not 100% sold on it,  but we'll say yes for now. I won't lock you in. It’s  okay. You don't have to commit. Star. Star. Oh, yeah. It's so smooth. It's sweet, too. It's like thick water. Yeah. Thicc water. Like, double c thicc. So smooth,  so buttery. It's really good. It's really nice. Purple. Boop. Voss. It's not. Really? I'm not getting  a whole lot of flavor in it. I'm getting a lot of flavor on my tongue. Man, should I have not taken a bite of

that sandwich in between takes? I'm going to tentatively assign this to SmartWater, but I'm not sure yet. Shoot. And meanwhile, I think it's Evian, but also I need to get rid of the flavor on  my tongue, apparently now. Oh, sorry. Green. Here, drink some water. Oh. Oh,  there's a flavor on the front. I think that might have been the Dasani with the  like front end… but it's clean on the back end. Sorry, I'm desperately trying  to clean my tongue off. Do you know what I mean? Or is that  the one

I hated? Which I think… Are we experiencing some taste bud fatigue here? I do wonder that. Is there a world where we are experiencing taste bud fatigue? Because there  is a world where you just have, like, so much. Oh I felt this one. There's a taste on this one. On the orange one. Yes. And it's a front taste, not a back taste. Right, exactly. The back finishes smooth. I'm pretty locked on these three. Right. So Aquafina,  the bubbly one with the back end flavor with like the aftertaste done. Ev

ian I think is, is clearly  here in the middle, I think it's the blue one. We're very clear on Fiji. I can do this, I can  do this. I’m so confused now. And we have very similar opinions about all these waters. So  it makes sense that I think our opinions would line up here as well. This feels like a lot of  pressure for something that is so inconsequential. Aquafina, you're both correct. Wooo Yes. Following with Dasani, which was in the Green Cup. Yeah! Evian up next, the Blue Cup. WOOOOO Come

on! SmartWater, orange cup. Yes! Fiji, it was the purple cup. Are you kidding me? No! No way, are you kidding me? Yup, Fiji was in the purple  and Voss was in the red star. Left it there. We were talking and we didn't bother to double check it. Oh, and we even  said it too. We said it was sweet and Fiji has no flavor *Anguish* I need to think back to Steve.  Steve from high school who didn't want to taste the non flavor with his lips. Oh,  what fools we've been. Hubris. Oh, we were Icarus and we

flew too close to the sun. What was Santi saying about water poisoning? That you'll probably be fine.  Don't quote me. I'm not a doctor. Not medical, Hashtag not medical advice. I'm proud of you for opening your mind and your palate to the wide, diverse flavors of water. Thanks. It's been a journey for me. I feel like I've come a long way. I developed an  opinion in an area where I was very happy to not have one before, unfortunately. But  I am much better educated to pick between, you know, be

tween water when I need to buy  bottled water. I'm very excited about it. Right? This is great. Yeah. So next time anyone  says, do you like, oh, bottled water all tastes the same. Certainly not. No, not even close. Not even close. Not even for a second.  What's your favorite across the board now? The Fiji Water and *whispering* and I  guess the Voss are also, also favorite. Yeah? I think for me, Evian and Fiji. Done. If you're going for, like whatever a mid-tier which is still a pretty expensiv

e water,  but mid-tier in this test. Evian I think would be the most economical but  still really good flavor solution. Right. Oh Steve, why didn't I listen to you? And why do I suddenly care so much about water? Anyway, from  our experiments, we definitively concluded that yes, you can in fact taste the designer waters  from the duds, which honestly, came as a pretty huge surprise to both of us. I was getting my  “oh, it's all just water” takes locked and loaded. But I guess the joke's on me. W

hy, though? If  the difference in flavor doesn't just come down to marketing hype, then what's going on here?  Well, after I came back from the experiment, I started digging deep underground. I wanted to  see what makes expensive water taste so special. And then I realized it's actually the ground.  As I mentioned earlier, more expensive brands like Evian take supposedly pure sources of water,  like those on freshly fallen snow caps, and then let them flow along and through the ground until  the

y're packaged up for people like us to buy. The other luxury brands? Yeah, they pretty much  do the exact same thing. While Evian comes from the French Alps, Voss comes from an isolated  stream in the south of Norway and Fiji... Well, it comes from Fiji, pretty self-explanatory. And  actually it's probably the coolest water that we looked into. Fiji water, instead of flowing  through a silly little mountain actually is naturally filtered through a frickin volcano. Yeah, they just put a giant vol

cano on the bottle and embrace how awesome that is. Jokes aside,  though, it's the volcanic rock that actually makes the water have, quote, “twice the amount of  electrolytes as other waters” and it also gives it that smooth flavor. But then how do rocks  add flavor and smoothness? Well, imagine the volcanic rock is kind of like a sponge, a very  hard sponge that was once liquid hot magma. Liquid hot magma. And has since cooled down into porous rock.  The pores in the stone increase the surface

area where a biofilm can develop. Essentially  a biofilm is an accumulation of microbes or microorganisms that act as a bouncer for the  water flowing through, keeping all the gross sediment and bacteria out while letting the  good minerals right into the VIP section. Then the water just sits there in an untouched  chamber of volcanic rock, a chamber that limits any other contaminants and retains the important  stuff for that pure mouthfeel. Honestly, when you think about it and hear it put this

  way, kinda makes sense why it's so expensive, which is a thing I thought I would never say  about bottled water, but here, kinda makes sense. As for all the cheaper brands, since they don't  have access to, you know, a volcano or a mountain; these pure, unadulterated sources of water,  they just grab fresh water from wherever they're located. They then have to filter out all the  nasty bits and if they're like SmartWater and Dasani, both Coke brands, incidentally, they  re-add some of those ta

sty minerals back into the water to give it a consistent flavor. Consistent? Yes. Tasty? Not 100% sure about that anymore. All in all, the cheaper brands  are so affordable because they're not just taking water from one super rare, important, pure  source and shipping it around the world for us to enjoy. Since they filter the water to oblivion  doesn't really matter where they get the water from. So anywhere you can get access to a stream  can be new ground zero for a water brand. Which is why I

tend to think that we see so many water  bottle brands that are region specific, like our Deer Park here in the Southeast or the Northeast. Poland Spring. all you need is a source of water, a way to filter it and to dream. So what does  this all mean for you and me? If expensive water is really better tasting, does that mean  that I'm going to suddenly smash my piggybank to get the best culinary experience for my  water? Either way, the answer is no, probably not. These premier waters do taste

better, but  that comes with such a hefty price tag. I am perfectly fine with fresh water out of the tap  or, you know, mildly filtered, chilled water out of the refrigerator. Would I recommend that you  go out and buy a supermarket's sized package of Fiji water for your fridge or start putting Voss  in water coolers for your Little League games? No, of course not. Remember, chilled water  actually covers up a lot of sins across the board. But, you know, if you're at the airport  and you're goin

g to need to buy a bottle of water for your long haul flight across the  pond anyway and be massively overcharged in the process. It might make sense to splurge for  that buttery mouthfeel of Fiji’s volcano water. Your tastebuds will thank you. But hey! That's  just a theory. A FOOD THEORY! Bottoms up. Or you know, you could avoid all of the plastic  waste that came out of this episode with one simple solution, and that is Air-Up, a  reusable plastic bottle that can flavor your water basically a

ny way that you want  to. Simple as this, boom, pop off the top, fill it with normal tap water or refrigerator  water, what have you. There, fill it up, plain water. The secret ingredient, the flavor  pods. Right? Just a scent. Right there. You are delicious flavor pod. I know I'm about to  change your world. I know you are flavor pod. I know. Get ready. So watch this. If I want that,  just normal water flavor. Boom I push it down. Smooth, simple. It just tastes like water. Wow,  filtered water

tastes like nothing filtered. Amazing. But you pop it up. Suddenly  it activates, the scent is permeating. And so as you drink, you get this little bubbling  solution, as you drink it in. You have some air getting mixed in. It creates this little bubbling  solution as it goes through the straw and into your mouth. In those bubbles, you get that scent  mixed in there, which is tricking your mind into thinking that this is flavored without any  artificial sugars, without any artificial flavors. No

thing. It is all based on brain chemistry. Some  might call it magic, but you know what? I don't. I call it science. Delicious. So in this case, I've  gone with a raspberry lemon, which is delicious. It reminds me of summer. It's like, a like a  delightful spa water, I imagine myself lounging on the beaches of Mexico with a little, little  lemon on my water glass, sweltering in the sun. And I'm like, Oh, I'm sunning. Mmmm. When I want  to be done with my beach vacation in Mexico, I simply toss i

t to the person off screen who  catches it and then tosses me a new flavor. And misses my hand entirely. Oh, you gave me  the wild Berry, you gave it the good stuff. Oh, that's that's the business. Save the environment,  help save your tastebuds and stay hydrated along the way with Air-Up. Thanks for sponsoring  this episode Air-Up and for our year’s worth of content. You've been a great partner to us. So  if you want to join me in pretending you're on the beach or in the clubhouse, then click t

he link  down in the description below and use the code. MATPAT to receive 15% off sitewide. That way you  can purchase your own bottle in flavor packets. Thank you Air-Up again for being such  an awesome sponsor for us throughout the entirety of this year. And as always,  my friends, I'll see you next week.