tap water - Articles and Posts from Slashfood

Posts with tag tap water

10 Dirty Little Restaurant Secrets

Posted Sep 21st 2009 4:00PM by Ben Widdicombe
Filed under: Restaurants

Photo: travelbex, Flickr.

There's a reason most restaurants keep the kitchen doors closed -- and it's not just because it's so hot back there.

It can be tough for restaurateurs to turn a profit and Slashfood has uncovered some of the ultra-dirty deeds even the best restaurants commit in order to pinch pennies.

Read on for 10 true stories about the subtle, sneaky and sometimes downright disgusting ways restaurants cheat to save a buck -- and how you might be paying the price.

Continue reading 10 Dirty Little Restaurant Secrets

Bottled water proving too expensive a habit to keep in economic tough times

Posted Jun 20th 2008 5:05PM by Shayna Glick
Filed under: Water, Trends, Newspapers

Up close, kind of blurry image of two bottles of water.

There is a book that came out recently about our obsession with bottled water called Botllemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It. In it, the author talks about our reliance on bottled water and how tap water is generally as pure or more pure than bottled water.

Americans are getting away from bottled water, but it isn't because of this new book. Apparently bottled water is just too expensive, and in an economic downturn it's one of those luxury items that gets cut. This report from CNN.com interviews several people who have switched to tap water as well as a few calculations of how much you can save by cutting out bottled water.

The report also briefly mentions the environmental aspect of this trend. Refusing to buy bottled water helps cut down on the plastic bottles, which we've been told for years is what we need to do. Are you cutting back or cutting out bottled water for economic reasons?

L.A. and B.C. tie for tastiest tap water title

Posted Feb 26th 2008 4:00PM by Ellen Slattery
Filed under: Tastings, Water, Newspapers, America

Yesterday, Marisa told you about the 2008 Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting this past week (what - you didn't attend?), Los Angeles and Clearbrook, British Columbia beat out 120 other entries, including ones from Macedonia and the Philippines, for the title.

Here's a closer look at the competition: the 10 judges based their selections on five criteria: taste, smell, texture, aftertaste, and clarity. They downed water from three categories: municipal, bottled, and the newest, purified.

In case you were wondering, the bottled water winner was Tumai Water from Martinsburg, West Virginia, the purified water winner was from Federalsburg, Maryland, and the carbonated bottled water winner flowed all the way from Emsdetten, Deutschland.

All of this begs the question: if you're tasting water, is it necessary to cleanse your palette between sips?

And we're wondering: how's your tap water?

Where is the most tasty tap water?

Posted Feb 25th 2008 12:00PM by Marisa McClellan
Filed under: Water

When you think about moving to a new city, you might take into account the school districts, the job market, the home prices and the property taxes. But do you spend time thinking about how the tap water tastes? Probably not. However, thanks to the Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting, you can now factor in the taste of a municipality's tap water in your move decisions.

This last Saturday, the panel of independent judges tasted water samples from 120 sources and determined that the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves Los Angeles, and the town of Clearbrook, British Columbia tied for first place in the tap water category.

For those of you in Los Angeles, do you think your tap water is award worthy? For the rest of you, how does your tap water stack up?

[via CNN.com]

Turning to tap water

Posted Jul 25th 2007 11:31AM by Marisa McClellan
Filed under: Restaurants, On the Blogs, America

Growing up in Portland, OR, when it came to drinking water, we were pretty lucky. The water that came out of the tap was clear and tasty. One of the hardest things to adjust to when I moved to Philadelphia was the fact that the water that came out of my kitchen sink didn't taste too great. For a while I bought bottled water, but my bank account couldn't handle that expense and I didn't like the amount of plastic I generated, especially living in an apartment building with sketchy recycling practices. It also felt wrong to me to buy bottled water, when I live in one of the few countries in the world where the tap water is pretty much universally safe for general consumption.

It appears that all across the country, upscale restaurants are making similar choices, leaving behind the bottled water and serving filtered still or carbonated water. Serious Eats has a nice round-up of recent establishments that are turning to the tap and choosing not serve bottled water, despite the financial sacrifice it entails.

photo by Marisa McClellan

Britain's tap water - clean, clean, clean

Posted Jun 29th 2006 12:09PM by Andrew Barrow
Filed under: Water, British Isles, Business, Health & Medical

Of the 146,000 complaints on the UK's water supply, almost 120,000 were made about the colour of the liquid gushing from the nation's taps. But figures just released show that just a tiny fraction under 100% (99.96% to be precise) met the minimum safety standards.

While only a tiny proportion of tap water failed to meet minimum standards, 2,597 people contacted their suppliers to claiming it had made them ill which the Drinking Water Inspectorate put down to the condition of the pipes and taps inside the complainants homes.

Birds are the most likely suspect on dirty water - dead birds in uncovered tanks are regularly found, other tanks are below where birds nest and defecate. Pipework in a lot of homes is old and made of lead - so that toxic particles flow out of taps.

Customers in the South West Water area were the most common complainers with more than 15 people complaining for every 1,000 of the population. Customers in Northumbria were the second-most likely to complain.

Is there too much fluoride in your drinking water?

Posted Mar 26th 2006 12:47PM by Sarah J. Gim
Filed under: Water, Science, America

We've talked about drinking water from the tap before, mostly about pollutants But what about things that are pruposely added to the water like fluoride?

The National Academy of Sciences, commissioned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has concluded that the maximum level of fluoride in drinking water is too high, and is urging the EPA to lower the levels. However, they haven't indicated to what level.

Fluoridation of water was originally introduced in 1945 as a preventative measure for dental health. While we all know that fluoride is an ingredient in toothpaste because it helps prevent tooth decay, too much fluoride poses some serious risks. Severe enamel fluorosis actually weakens dental enamel causing cavities, but more importantly, researchers have reason to believe that fluoride may contribute to bone fractures, skeletal fluorosis and possibly bone cancer.

None of this matters if you're loyal to your Evian, but if you're concerned about the level of fluoride in your community, check with the CDC.

Straight From the Tap - Cleanest Cities for Drinking Water

Posted Jan 24th 2006 3:55PM by Sarah J. Gim
Filed under: Water, East Coast, West Coast, Vegetarian, Organic, Vegan, Non-GMO, Magazines, Raves & Reviews, Lists

tap water Last summer, Reader's Digest published an article listing the 50 cleanest metropolitan cities in America. They scored cities based on air and water qualities, pollution by industrial toxics, and sanitation. There's no big surprise that Portland scored the highest for cleanliness overall, but what did surprise (me, at least), was that several cities that I would never have guessed, scored a perfect 50 for the quality of their tap water. Riverside? Las Vegas? The list of perfect scoring cities are below:

Buffalo, NY
Columbus, OH
Denver, CO
Las Vegas, NV
Portland, OR
Riverside, CA
Sacramento, CA
Salt Lake City, UT
San Diego, CA
San Francisco, CA
San Jose, CA

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10 Dirty Little Restaurant Secrets

Bottled water proving too expensive a habit to keep in economic tough times

L.A. and B.C. tie for tastiest tap water title

Where is the most tasty tap water?

Turning to tap water

Britain's tap water - clean, clean, clean

Is there too much fluoride in your drinking water?

Straight From the Tap - Cleanest Cities for Drinking Water

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