My deceptive water bottle

It was the second hour of French class and I was getting pretty thirsty. The professor was droning on about stress accents and the tails of Cs when my wandering eye caught the cap of the water bottle stuck in my backpack. Excellent! I reached under the desk, pulled open the container and chugged a couple comforting swigs. The lecture didn’t get any more interesting, but at least I wasn’t parched anymore.

I kept the water bottle on my desk in case the thirsts decided to attack again and once again pretended to listen. That’s when it hit me: I was a victim of false advertising! I know, I know, that doesn’t make any sense. But it will. Keep reading.

Below is a picture of the bottle from which I drank in the first paragraph:



It looks really normal, doesn’t it? “The kind of water that tastes like water” as they say on the TV. Looks can be deceiving. This particular bottle is actually none of those; it is just Safeway’s generic “Refreshe” brand and nothing fancy. Either the typist who wrote out the label was new or French, because refresh is not spelled with an “e.”

My sensibilities were comforted by this label on the side of the bottle:



I’d had pizza and a diet soda for lunch (both high in salt) so the fact that the bottle didn’t have any sodium was comforting. I smiled inwardly. Then my eyes wandered to the opposite side of the water label where I saw:



“Cody, ça vas?” My teacher had a concerned expression on her face as she looked at me from the front of the class. In my horror, I had probably done something ungentlemanly. “Oui, ça vas bien.” Then my brain went on auto pilot. “Et vous? Comment allez-vous?” Sodium Bicarbonate! SODIUM Bicarbonate which adds an “insignificant” amount of sodium! Whatever happened to that “Sodium Free” label with the heart? I almost coughed up the water right then. What a blatant act of deception! Anyone who cares about their health could take the time to flip the bottle over and find out what was really going on.

My curiosity piqued, I turned the bottle and began scrutinizing the label for other inconsistencies.



Some people might find this comforting. But for me, in my deception induced heightened state of alert, this was a clue. And an oxymoron. How in the world is osmosis reversed? We learn in biology that osmosis refers to the act of any liquid going down the concentration gradient (like water down a hill, only different). Without some serious magic or technology, it is impossible to reverse that. And the reversal is never natural.

My teacher interrupted my line of thinking to ask me a question. I mumbled out an answer that I and the rest of the class forgot almost as soon as it was uttered and returned to my aqua thoughts.

The front of the bottle advertised that the water was filtered using a microfilter (just below the sodium free notification and two pictures up in case you forgot). In my book, water cannot be both microfiltered and reversed osmosised. It’s impossible. They must have mixed up the bottles somewhere down the line.

I sighed and leaned back in my seat. No one paid any attention (At this point in the semester, I could come to class wearing a speedo and no one would bat an eyelash; there is one guy who might, but for the most part, no one would care.) and I rusticated in my disappointment. I had purchased this bottle of water as part of a thirty count case a week ago and I could think of no way to legally express my disappointment in a manner that would effectively relieve the stress. Then I saw it:



The bottle still contained a third of its original contents and I knew the Safeway where I’d bought it. All I would need to do was run down and get it replaced. I was antsy until class ended and I raced down the stairwell, fully intending to cross the street and return the bottle. That’s when another attack of the thirsts hit. And I stopped. Desperate, I looked to the deceptive bottle for quenching liquid. Before I could think through the consequences of my action I had swallowed the last drop, reverse osmosis, sodium bicarbonate, money back guarantee and all.

The worst part about this story is that I was back in Safeway yesterday. And I purchased another 30 count package. Hey, it was the cheapest there.