bottled water/ tap water, which is better.?

In most cases, tap water comes from lakes, rivers, or ponds. In the US, most tap water is treated with chlorosamine, and filtered. If you filter it yourself with activated charcoal, you can remove such industrial wastes as solvents, etc.

But you still end up with soft water.

Some bottled water, such as Dasani and AquaFina, consists of tap water which has been treated to remove the chlorosamine, had chemicals added to improve the taste, and treated with ozone to kill anything living in the water. But such manufactured waters can be dangerous. In Europe, there have been multiple recalls of Dasani, because the added chemicals were carcinogens. Why no recalls in the US or Canada? Sounds like a category to *avoid*.

However, bottled spring water is water from deep below the earth's surface. It's ozonated and bottled - no other treatment. (Ozone is 3 atoms of oxygen bonded together. It's unstable, and breaks down into regular oxygen - 2 atoms of oxygen bonded into 1 molecule - within hours. By that time, the bottle is sealed, and nothing living is going to get in.

So I feel comfortable with the safety of bottled spring water.

Commercial ice is treated tap water. The chlorine is removed to make it taste better, and they get remove impurities in order to produce a crystal-clear ice that doesn't taste bad. On the other hand, if you melt down that ice and drink it, you remain thirsty. It doesn't have the mineral salts that quench your thirst.

I don't want pure water. I don't want just *any* impurities, either. A mineralized water from deep in the earth seems to be the best option - and at 69c a gallon, it's the cheapest health insurance I can buy.

I realize health care financing is different in Canada than it is in the US, but isn't it still better to remain healthy, even if doctors, drugs and hospitals are free?

In most cases the only difference is that one's a filtered version of the other. Bottle water may not have the chemical tastes as tap water if your tap water has been treated.

Yup. In the FDA, the body that governs bottled water there is ONE person devoted to bottled water.

Your tap water is governed by the EPA and there are tens of people in each water district to monitor your tap water.

bottled. tap water can help cause kiddny stones....ouch. plus tap has clorine......which dont tast good.....i only use it to clean my whitest of whites.....not my guts