People Are Paying $37 Per Bottle for ‘Raw Water,’ the First Bizarre Health Trend of 2018

“Tap water? You’re drinking toilet water with birth control drugs in them.”

We’re not even a full week into 2018, and the trendy health-conscious people of California have already flung a new and completely unnecessary health trend our way: The “raw water” movement.

According to the New York Times, the raw water movement is taking hold of the West Coast, especially in Silicon Valley and San Francisco, where people are trying to “get off the water grid.”

If you’re confused as to what this means, let me assure you that it confuses me too. Without thinking about it too deeply, one can assume “raw water” probably means something like bottled puddle water, or rain collected in a mason jar.

According to a company called Live Water — who sells 2.5 gallon jugs of water for $37 — raw water is unfiltered, unsterilized, and untreated spring water from Opal Springs in Culver, Oregon, that has probiotic properties and beneficial minerals that normal water doesn’t have.

First off… what the fuck? Paying $37 dollars for a jug of water? You can get your probiotics and minerals from somewhere else. Come on. That’s just wasteful. Also, I’m pretty sure “raw” stands for “Really Affluent Women,” because they’re probably the only people who drink this nonsense.

“Tap water? You’re drinking toilet water with birth control drugs in them,” founder of Live Water, Mukhande Singh (formerly known as Christopher Sanborn before he changed his name), told the NY Times. “Chloramine, and on top of that they’re putting in fluoride. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but it’s a mind-control drug that has no benefit to our dental health.”

What the hell is going on in the West Coast? Snap out of it, everyone!! Get a Brita like the rest of us, or drink some Poland Spring or something if you absolutely insist on bottled water. 

By filtering water, Singh says, “you’re going to get 99 percent of the bad stuff out, but now you have dead water.”

“Real water” should expire after a few months, he explains. “It stays most fresh within one lunar cycle of delivery. If it sits around too long, it’ll turn green. People don’t even realize that because all their water’s dead, so they never see it turn green.”

One lunar cycle…? Is he high? I don’t know what to say right now. I really don’t. 

And in case you’re wondering what this magical probiotic water tastes like, here’s a detailed description from Kevin Freeman, a shift manager at a store that sells raw water: “It has a vaguely mild sweetness, a nice smooth mouth feel, nothing that overwhelms the flavor profile.”

Wow, that’s the most pretentious description of water I’ve ever heard. I don’t know if I should laugh, scream, or cry. Perhaps I’ll do all three in succession. 

Lastly, I’d like to point out that there are people all over the world who are literally dying from drinking “raw” water, yet Silicon Valley techies and Californian yuppies are paying absurd amounts of money to have it brought in from Oregon, probably to wash down the mystery pills they take at Coachella. 

Nice one, guys, 

H/T: New York Times / IFLScience