Now most of you might think that water is water. But to millions of people, different brands of bottled water aren’t the same. Aquafina and Dasani are both made by two rival companies who have a longstanding feud. Perhaps you’ve heard of them – Pepsi and Coke. Aquafina was the first bottled water available for a long period of time – released in 1994. Coke waited to see the success of Aquafina before they released Dasani in 1999.
Aquafina has always tasted horrible to me, ever since I first tried it in high school back in 1995. It tasted like metallic tap water with a strange ‘twang’ at the end of any long draught you’d pull from the bottle. With the advent of the Internet, we’re able to see exactly how Pepsi makes Aquafina.
Aquafina is in fact, tap water that has undergone charcoal filtration, reverse osmosis, and finally, ozonation. All of that to help purify the water and yet it still retains that strange ‘twangy’ tap water flavor. Nothing seems to have been added to Aquafina.
Dasani on the other hand, has tasted like liquid gold to me ever since it first came out in 1999 when I was desperately trying any kind of bottled water other than Aquafina. Of course, with the exclusive distribution of Pepsi or Coke products at almost every location where soda is sold limits your options somewhat. I first saw Dasani in the cooler at a gas station when I was filling up my car’s tank after soccer practice in 105 degree weather.
I bought the bottle of Dasani and opened it, hoping that it’d taste better than Aquafina but didn’t want to overextend myself by taking in a long gulp at first. So I took a sip and swished the water around in my mouth. It tasted like pure water with no aftertaste and as I was extremely thirsty, I greedily sucked down the entire bottle in one swallow.
Dasani advertises itself as being purified water with added minerals for enhanced taste and I can certainly vouch that its taste is far better than Aquafina’s. Dasani utilizes tap water like Aquafina but uses a different process to make the water taste different. Dasani purifies the water via reverse osmosis and then adds minimal amounts of minerals including salt and Epsom salt to improve the taste of Dasani.
After I tasted Dasani, I couldn’t go back to Aquafina by choice. Given an option, I would always choose Dasani – there’s simply no reason to select Aquafina apart from necessity. And by necessity I mean the road trip I took to California from North Carolina in the summer of 2000. Driving through the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona, I could feel the heat rising from the road. Temperatures hovered around 125 degrees during the day. And every single gas station I stopped at on the way poured Pepsi products exclusively.
As you can imagine, I was quite unhappy during that trip. I had no option but to drink Aquafina during those highway stretches. But once I crossed the border into California and saw Dasani in the cooler of the first gas station I stopped in, I nearly wept with happiness. I bought five bottles and drank them all in a futile effort to wash out the memories of Aquafina.
Now from another perspective, Aquafina technically would be the “purer” water but when have we ever drunk something just because it was “purer”? We violate water with all sorts of additives and flavorings just to make fun drinks. What really matters is how something tastes to us.
And to me, Aquafina has failed the taste test. Long live Dasani!
