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  1. blf says

    Some gluten-free water are deliberate hoax sites, albeit I have no idea about the one referenced in the OP. The linked-to Angry Chef quotes the creator of that particular hoax site (Clara Gluten Free Water):

    […]

    It was really set up to explore how easy it is to manipulate people with headlines. People tend to create their own narrative. It is very easy for people to get wrapped up in their own book without paying attention. Immediacy has become very important in modern business life. People will wake up and answer emails at 3am. People fill their time with 24-hour news casts and it is to their detriment. Because of this, there is an ability to manipulate immediacy. We end up thinking that it is OK to only read the headline because ‘I am busy’. This ability to manipulate headlines is exploited by politicians who now use it as their main platform.

    When creating Clara I thought ‘How can I exploit headline writers so that people will claim to be outraged and just Tweet it out without having really looked into it?’ This is especially true in food and health culture. Superfoods, toxins, they are a multi-billion industry based on vague claims.’

    Culture has become very fast. It needs time to slow down. To talk and think. Food and cooking is really good for this. Taking time to cook allows you time to slow down. Some of the best conversations I have ever had have been while taking time to cook dinner.

    The genius of Clara is that it is a hoax designed to fool the very people who see themselves as the most cynical and disbelieving. It utilizes the pace of the modern world to encourage us to make fast instinctive judgements. These judgements are too often made by our instinctive brain and happen because we don’t take the time to stop for a moment. Even the most analytical and scientific minds are susceptible to jumping to false conclusions. […]

    Clara’s creator points out that although that site has been up for some time, and he’s even had people trying to place orders, The Angry Chef is about the only one who ever actually challenged or even investigated the site.

  2. says

    And a whole lot of people will pay much more than they should for it, too.

    To be frank, that’s my opinion of just about all bottled water sold anywhere where fresh, clean, safe water is available via the kitchen tap. It takes a special kind of mug to pay supermarket prices for summat they can get for free. And that’s before I start considering what happens to a good proportion of those plastic bottles.

    And talking of plastic and pollution, here’s a case where bottled water is, sadly, not a con, but a necessity.

  3. says

    Daz:

    To be frank, that’s my opinion of just about all bottled water sold anywhere where fresh, clean, safe water is available via the kitchen tap. It takes a special kind of mug to pay supermarket prices for summat they can get for free. And that’s before I start considering what happens to a good proportion of those plastic bottles.

    I agree, wholeheartedly. Especially when, if you’re the type of person who just has to complain about their tap water, you have so many options for filtering, but no, purchasing tap water in multitudes of plastic is so much better! And honestly, most people cannot tell the difference, in spite of what they say. Penn & Teller did a great ep of Bullshit on that.

  4. says

    I remember when they were billing jelly beans as “fat free” and pasta as “sugar free”
    Marketers and advertisers are dishonest people. It’s their job to be dishonest.

  5. says

    This isn’t dishonesty -- there is no water that has gluten in it. This is ‘absence labeling’. Marketing to stupid people.

  6. emergence says

    The mainlling point of this stuff is that it’s colored black with fulvic compounds. It’s just an attempt at making mineral-infused “alkaline water” look cool.

    Daz @3:
    Bottled water is also useful when, say, a hurricane is rolling through and could disable your plumbing. Not that Rush Limbaugh acknowledges that though.

  7. says

    emergence:

    The mainlling point of this stuff is that it’s colored black

    No shit. You suppose the name is a bit of fuckin’ hint? Also, you can navigate straight to the site from the link I provided, full of handy dandy information. What does that have to do with them advertising and labeling their water as gluten free?

  8. Callinectes says

    I have to buy overpriced gluten-free cereal because they ADD GLUTEN to breakfast cereals made from gluten-free grains.

  9. emergence says

    Caine @9

    I was just pointing out that there was an extra layer of health woo to this stuff beyond it being advertised as “gluten free”. I looked at that site before you mentioned it, and it spends a lot of time talking about the supposed health benefits of fulvic compounds. Even if they didn’t advertise that fucking mineral water was gluten-free and non-GMO, this stuff would still be laughable snake oil.

  10. says

    I looked it up: 7,50 a bottle on Amazon.
    You got to be a special kind of idiot to buy that.

    voyager

    A collapsible, reusable water tote with spigot is equally useful.

    Not quite. Bottled water will still be fine after 7 days without fresh water, the stuff in your tote not so much.
    But of course “bottled water is a necessity in extreme cases” is not an excuse for buying bottled water when there’s perfectly fine water coming out of the tap.

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