Here’s Another Product Idahoans Don’t Need

This one was a bit too much for me.  Gatorade water!  It was on a local store shelf.  I guess it’s loaded with the same thing you get from some of the juice the brand sells, but with more of a water taste.  Or is it an attempt to cash in on selling bottled water?  I drink water from a tap, or when I pass a local spring.  I’ve seen people I know buy pallets of bottled water when they’re shopping, and wonder if they’re being taken in by a big scam.

Do you know if the water in the bottle is from a pure spring, or a tap somewhere far away, and then shipped here on a truck?

If you’re worried the tap water is a hazard, then put a filter on it.  There wasn’t any such thing as bottled water on store shelves until I was a teenager, and it was sold to people as a status symbol.  Like some women who spend a fortune on a purse or shoes because an Italian name is attached, and that somehow conveys status.

When the west was young, people had few choices.  If you settled down, you had a spring or well.  Otherwise, you drank from a stream or river.  An old Far Side cartoon shows two fellows talking about the great taste, while around a bend upstream, cattle are wading.  While there were certainly cases of dysentery and poisoning, most people appeared to have survived.

Here’s my take on Gatorade drinks.  When it first became available on store shelves, the guys drank it like pop, because that’s what our athletic heroes did.  You weren’t cool unless you wore Adidas on your feet, and your bike was a Schwinn.  In retrospect, a lot of people bought labels, but I’m not sure if it made any sense from cost, or made you a better person.