Actually it has more to do with sugar loaded soft drinks than water itself. Soft drink manufacturers do not want bottled water producers to make claims that they can not legally put on their own bottles. Unless Coca Cola can make matching health claims on their product, they don't want anyone else to state the obvious. To claim that water can prevent or treat dehydration on the packaging of your product is to say that water is better for you than sugar-loaded soda pop...
And we can't have that, because people will start drinking water instead of soda pop, and Coca Cola will unfairly suffer an economic loss. If a soft drink manufacturer can not make the same claim, based on the water content of their product (almost every beverage can prevent dehydration in the same way that water can, because most contain water) then it is an unfair advantage given to the bottled water producers. So, they have to punish the bottled water producers, disallow them to make the claim, and thereby preventing soda pop manufacturers to make the same claim, fooling the public into thinking that sugar-loaded soda pop is actually good for you and they should drink more of it without any guilt.
It also might lead people to believe that bottled water works better at preventing/treating dehydration than tap water, that somehow the water in the bottle has some sort of magical properties that tap water does not. After all, where is the label with the same health claims on your faucet? There is none.
I'm happy that the EU did this ruling, I don't think it'd be nice for us to have the packing of french fries saying they cure cancer.
-jgpaiva
Very true, except for the fact that no French fry producer ever has, or is ever likely, to make such a claim.
-40hz
But if they allow bottled water producers to claim it can prevent dehydration, what would stop the french fry maker from claiming their product can prevent low blood sugar, and then the ignorant consumer saying to themselves "Oh, I don't want low blood sugar to happen to me, so I better eat more french fries" and then eating themselves right into a case of Type 2 Diabetes, all the while thinking they were doing something healthy to themselves?.
Don't think that a french fry manufacturer wouldn't do that. Back in the 80's when everybody got cholesterol crazy and it was determined that liquid soybean oil didn't raise your cholesterol level the same as animal fats, butter, or margarine, the place where my husband worked, that deep fried everything, hung up a big sign advertising how their product was good for your heart, cooked in cholesterol-free soybean oil. And something like
this should NEVER have a claim attached to it intended to try to fool the public into thinking that it is healthy and good for you!
Recent Posts
