Raw Water, A Silicon Valley Fad That Could Kill

You've probably heard of the raw milk dietary fad. Raw honey. Raw meat. If you're a Silicon Valley executive with money flowing out of your noggin though, these fads just aren't raw enough. There is a niche raw water seeks to fill.

“Unfiltered, untreated, unsterilized spring water” is being sold for as much as $60.99 for a 2.5-gallon jug, though each subsequent refill "only" costs $14.99, according to Business Insider.

Exorbitant price for a product that costs less to produce aside, it seems this fad might have roots in certain worries regarding the types of chemicals placed in the water supply. However, there's no reason why filtered water should be shirked in favor of the completely untreated variety.

Remember that overpriced fresh-juice-in-a-packet fad pushed by the mainstream media and "invented" by Doug Evans, CEO of Juicero? It shut down in September last year, leaving idio- err, consumers who already bought the expensive 700 dollars "juicing" machine with a gigantic countertop wifi-connected white elephant.

Evans seems to be promoting yet another overpriced beverage, making posts on social media trumpeting his appetite for expensive unsanitized water from a company called "Live Water". “I haven’t tasted tap water in a long time,” he told the NY Times. With the amount he squeezed from investors in his juicer, perhaps he can afford to drink liquid gold...

"Tap water? You’re drinking toilet water with birth control drugs in them,” Founder of Live Water, Mukhande Singh, added. “Chloramine, and on top of that they’re putting in fluoride. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but it’s a mind-control drug that has no benefit to our dental health.”

While fluoride does help with one's teeth, brushing one's teeth should provide enough to safeguard one's teeth from decay without having to ingest the stuff. However, were that the major concern, filtered water should be a safer alternative to going completely off the grid...

Mukhande claims raw water contains probiotics that are not destroyed by the sanitization process; however, fecal bacteria seems to be just as likely to survive untreated...

“Almost everything conceivable that can make you sick can be found in water,” Marler, food-safety advocate and lawyer, told Business Insider. Untreated water can be contaminated with animal poop, spreading a variety of diseases.

“The diseases that killed our great-grandparents were completely forgotten about,” he noted. “It’s fine till some 10-year-old girl dies a horrible death from cholera in Montecito, California.”