While world health officials are trying to bring clean drinking water to sickly communities around the globe, there appears to be an upstart movement promoting so-called “raw water,” which is said to be considerably better for your health than pure clean water.
Raw water, by definition, is left untreated and reported to contain living organisms that provide health benefits. One brand, aptly named Live Water, is selling for more than $6 a gallon. You are advised to drink it within a month to prevent it from turning green, presumably from the growth of organisms.
The movement, which seems to encourage people to go out in search of natural springs, grew rapidly in California with the help of a guru-like character who changed his name from Chris Sanborn to Mukhande Singh. The whole story has been just too good of a setup for comedians to ignore.
There are some very amusing lines in the videos shown on this page, but I thought I should begin with a video that actually puts the issue into a serious context. Reporter Gabrielle Karol of KOIN-TV in Portland produced an investigative report two weeks ago. She found that the source of “Live Water” is a bottling and distribution plant in Oregon.
The raw water craze is a concept that can be shaped to any comedic style — from (in order of videos on this page) Jordan Klepper, Desi Lydic of The Daily Show and Steven Colbert.
The fifth video shows a costumed Jeff Holiday, appearing as Hemlock Moonwolf. Jeff is a YouTube regular who describes himself as a “humble neuroscience student using his free time to debunk bad science, discuss current issues with logic and have a good time.”
Even NPR’s “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me” radio show got in on the humor with a limerick:
I head to the spring with a straw,
Sip a glacier that’s fresh off the thaw.
No fluoride or filter
Will throw me off kilter.
I only drink water that’s ___.
Guest participant Andrea Chabot: “Raw? … What?”
Host Peter Sagal: “Move over, kombucha and turmeric powder; there’s a new reason to hate millennial hipsters. It’s called raw water. Unfiltered, untreated, unsterilized water. Who hasn’t had a glass of water and thought, this is nice, but it needs more E. coli?
“You see, these risk-taking, hip millennials do not want boring, safe tap water. No, they want to know that every sip might be their last. Apparently, they say taste is a big factor here. One person said, quote, “it has a vaguely mild sweetness, a nice smooth mouthfeel, nothing that overwhelms the flavor profile,” unquote. Not to worry — I want to assure you that person was immediately slapped in the face.”
Tamar Haspel, who writes the blog “Unearthed” for the Washington Post, says, “I think the biggest reason that people are willing to pay $6 a gallon for water that comes straight to them from deep in the earth’s bowels is that they are suspicious of the water that comes straight to them from the kitchen faucet. It’s the chemicals and the drug residues and leached lead and the duck poop…”
She goes on to discuses what can be found in raw water and the potential health benefits or lack thereof.
If I can offer one final video, check out at the bottom by ZDoggMD, who is a physician and “purveyor of the finest medical satire.” He puts a personal spin on the issue before relating the raw water movement to the Dunning-Kruger effect, a psychological term defined as “a cognitive bias in which people of low ability have illusory superiority and mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is (Wikipedia).”
Whoa there, Dr. Zogg. That’s getting a little deep, but I do like the line he offers on his website: “Drinking raw water? Let’s party like it’s 1699!”
ZDoggMD admits that he actually grew up drinking raw water, like many people in Kitsap County who drink untreated water from a private well or a small water system. Well water meets the definition of “raw,” I guess, but water that comes from a deep underground supply is unlikely to have much of the algae, viruses and bacteria that some people seem to crave.
