Despite what you might have heard, spring water might not be all it’s cracked up to be….
The very first piece of advice I ever received when I started still sticks with me to this day.
Actually, it is probably even more important now than it was all those years ago!
When I first decided on a career in the health and fitness industry, I wasn’t sure which path I wanted to choose but I was drawn to nutrition from the start (I was, after all, already helping a few sports teams with their nutrition). So to dip my toe in the water of studying this enormous subject, I enrolled on an Australian Open University diploma with the imaginative name of Human Nutrition (the first of many nutrition quallies I would gain in the following years)
So the one piece of advice that sticks in my mind was around water consumption.
We was reminded how fortunate we are to live in a country that can supply us with perfectly adequate and safe drinking water in our own homes.
Many people in many countries are not so fortunate.
“There is no need for you to be drinking bottled water” explained the lecturer.
“Do you know that most bottled water is more expensive than petrol and yet we moan daily about the cost of petrol. Yet we have ‘petrol’ running through the taps in our kitchen and still we go out and buy more” he continued
This advice was important all those years ago – it is even more important nowadays with the current focus on climate change and single use plastics.
We seem to focus a lot at the moment about the recycling and dumping of single use plastics and the damage we are doing to wildlife and our environments (and rightly so!) but we seem to be forgetting the production aspect of all these bottles too.
To make the vast amount of plastic that we use to manufacture these bottles (bottles we rarely need in the Western world) we use huge amounts of fossil fuels. These fossil fuels are sending large amounts of carbon into our atmosphere, causing our planet to warm, ice caps to melt and our oceans to rise. Oceans that we are then filling with the waste product of this production process – single use plastic.
Can we not see how silly and self-destructive this is?!
Yes, from a nutritional point of view, drinking natural, clear and filtered spring water is amazing for us. We will even see different electrolyte qualities and different benefits between different brands such as Evian, Buxton and Volvic, but I ask you this one question……
Is the small amount of difference this water makes to our body worth it at the expense of the destruction of the planet and all life that lives upon it?
I for one don’t think it is.
Yes, the water and the quality of the water that we drink is very important but it will only truly make a difference if we live a very healthy, clean lifestyle already. Having a bottle of Evian with you Big Mac and Fries is not going to make you healthy.
So for me, I will continue to take my glass water bottle with me everywhere I can as most cafes, pubs, service stations and shops will happily fill these up for you for free nowadays. Do you think you could purchase a glass water bottle and do the same?
We can save money and in our own little way, we can save the planet.
If you want to know about how you can improve your health AND save the planet, the new Path to Power program begins in July and you can grab your place by clicking below….
https://healthbuddy.fit/path-to-power/
Mark x
