The best-selling bottled waters in America are not mineral waters. Dasani, Aquafina and Smartwater, most of the shelf by volume, begin as municipal supply, the same water the city mains carry, run through reverse osmosis or a still until very little of anything is left. Some brands stop there. Others dose a pinch back in for taste. Our catalog is built on published mineral analyses, and these bottles sit in it flagged unverified, because the numbers a database needs have never been published for them. This post is the reason why.
What the words on the label mean
In the United States the words carry legal definitions. Mineral water must rise from a protected underground source already carrying at least 250 mg/L of dissolved solids, all of it natural, none of it added. Spring water must genuinely flow from a spring. Purified water is defined the other way around, by what has been removed, treated until the dissolved load falls to roughly 10 mg/L or less. The first two words describe an origin. The third describes a process.
Europe draws the same line harder still. A natural mineral water under EU law is bottled at one named source and left essentially untouched, which is why a Gerolsteiner can print the geology of the Eifel on its label and mean it.
What Dasani, Smartwater and Aquafina actually are
Dasani is not a mineral water. It is municipal water passed through reverse osmosis, then dosed with magnesium sulfate, potassium chloride and a little salt, the ingredient list on its own label, added for taste. Smartwater is vapor distilled, then given calcium chloride, magnesium chloride and potassium bicarbonate, sold as electrolytes. Aquafina adds nothing back at all and lands near the mineral weight of rain. None of this is hidden. It is printed on every bottle in small type.
The difference from a mineral water is the story, not just the amount. The 2,500 mg/L in a Gerolsteiner were dissolved out of volcanic rock over years underground. The few milligrams in a Dasani were weighed into a tank. One is geology, the other is seasoning.
Why we cannot print their numbers
Every water page in our catalog carries a published analysis, calcium, magnesium, sodium, bicarbonate and the rest, each traced to a source we show openly. For the purified brands that analysis does not exist. Coca-Cola publishes annual water quality reports for Dasani and Smartwater, and they are compliance documents, contaminant levels held against federal limits, line after line reading not detected or below the limit. Calcium, magnesium, sodium and bicarbonate are not regulated contaminants, so they are not reported at all. The numbers that would describe weight and character are simply absent. Making them up is the one thing this site does not do.
Third-party databases will happily fill the silence, and they are a trap. The most widely copied mineral panel for Dasani, calcium 37, bicarbonate 184, belongs to the Malaysian Dasani, a genuine natural mineral water sold under the same name half a world away. The American bottle holds around 34 mg/L of everything combined. We would rather print nothing than print that.
Is purified water bad
No, and this is not that post. Purified water is clean and consistent, the same bottle in Phoenix as in Boston, and that is the whole design brief. On a low-sodium diet it complies by definition, and its emptiness is roughly what formula preparation asks for, though our list of bottles safe for formula only admits waters with published panels, which these brands do not have. It will never surprise you. The absence is the product. Our only quarrel is with the word mineral appearing anywhere near it.
If you like the taste of nothing
The taste purified water is aiming for exists in nature, with a birth certificate. Spa Reine rises in the Belgian Ardennes at 33 mg/L. Voss holds 44. The light waters collection gathers every verified bottle in that register, each with the full published analysis the purified brands cannot show.
And if you are not sure which register is yours, the quiz asks seven questions and answers with a real bottle and the numbers behind it. Water with its papers in order.