What is Smart Water and is it good for you?

The bottled water market in the United Kingdom is HUGE, and approximately 95% of that water is sold in plastic bottles.

In 2021 consumption of bottled water in the UK stood at 49.7 litres per person and this is expected to rise to 57 litres by 2027. If you’re interested in looking at some brief statistics then head on over to Statista.

Bottled water generates millions of pounds for the various brands and drives massive profits.

Here at Fountain Filters, we don’t understand why the consumption of bottled water needs to continue rising, when there are superior drinking water filters and other water filter systems for home available that are:

• more convenient
• cheaper per litre of water
• more planet friendly

One of those big-name brands that’s hitting your pocket hard is Smart Water by Coca Cola.

In this article we’re going to examine Smart Water in more depth and then compare it against some alternatives and more practical solutions that will address any concerns you have about the water you drink.  

What is Smart Water?

The brand Smart Water first hit the scene in the United States in 1998. This premium branded and highly priced bottled water from Coca-Cola then penetrated the UK market around 2014.

But what is Smart Water?

In a nutshell, Smart Water is vapour-distilled British spring water with added electrolytes of calcium chloride, magnesium chloride and potassium bicarbonate.

Coca Cola markets the distillation process as ‘a process inspired by the clouds’!

Smart Water is now sold in 100% recycled plastic bottles, apart from the label and cap which are recyclable, but are not made from recycled plastic.

Depending on where you buy Smart Water from, the lowest price we’ve been able to find, when doing some research, for this article was around 55p for a 600ml bottle, but that’s only if you buy 24 bottles at a time.

How is Smart Water made?

We know that Smart Water is vapour-distilled spring water. Let’s look at this more closely.

But before we do it’s important to add that there are no known benefits of distilling potable water and then reintroducing the ingredients lost in the distillation process. In Smart Water’s case, this refers to calcium, magnesium, and potassium.

To manufacture Smart Water, the collected spring water goes through an industrial process called distillation that removes most inorganic impurities, such as naturally dissolved minerals, many of which are good for us. The spring water is boiled until it turns into vapour and then its condensed back into liquid.

After distillation, the water undergoes a secondary water purification process and then the good nutrients of calcium, magnesium, and potassium are added back in. These electrolytes would have been removed in the first stage.

The distillation process requires a lot of electricity. Approximately 78 calories of energy are used to produce 1 litre of water.

What are the Smart Water bottle ingredients

The Smart Water bottle ingredients are spring water and electrolytes of calcium chloride, magnesium chloride, and potassium bicarbonate.

Would you know exactly what these electrolytes were and whether they were good for you? It’s OK, not many people would. Smart Water contains the following in trace amounts.

• Calcium carbonate in Smart Water – is often added to bottled water to adjust the pH and alkalinity and improve the taste of the water. Because it’s in such small quantities it has no real nutritional value. Foods such as broccoli and kale contain significant amounts of calcium carbonate. Calcium carbonate is often added into food such as dried fruits, cereals, processed meat and fish, canned products.
• Magnesium chloride in Smart Water – the heart, nerves, bones, muscles, and cell health rely on magnesium. Magnesium rich foods include roasted almonds, pumpkin seeds, spinach, cashew nuts and peanuts.
• Potassium bicarbonate in Smart Water – essential inorganic compound that’s good for bones, muscles, and the heart. It will be added to Smart Water to enhance the taste. A wide range of foods are good for potassium intake such as apricots, avocados, bananas, spinach, kale, tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergine, courgette, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, carrots, potatoes, beans, and peas.
• Remember you can consume calcium, magnesium, and potassium from a good balanced diet. Don’t ever rely of Smart Water to give you enough.

Coca Cola markets Smart Water bottle ingredients as ‘pure genius’. They use seductive words that incite those who drink it into believing that they’ll have increased levels of clear thinking, fitness, mindfulness, adventure, sport, and well-being.

Smart Water is also pH balanced, sugar free, gluten free, with no artificial flavours or colours added. They will be referring to their flavoured range here as water wouldn’t contain any of these things anyway.

Is Smart Water good for you?

A fantastic question – Smart Water – is it good for you?

Water is good for you. It’s vital for our body and plays a supportive role for how our body functions. Water carries nutrients to our cells, it helps get rid of waste products, it cushions and protects our joints and organs and maintains our body temperature.  

Water is far better for you than still or carbonated soft drinks that are packed full of refined sugar or artificial sweeteners such as aspartame.

So, when we are asked as water filtration specialists to give answers to the range of questions, we get asked about Smart Water such as ‘how good is Smart Water’, and ‘is Smart Water any good’, we must be honest and say that Smart Water is UNNECESSARY.

In fact, we do not believe that any bottled water is necessary when there are much better ways to filter water and all of them from the comfort of your own home.

The SMARTEST thing you can do is to stop buying bottles of water.

And if you don’t like the taste of your household tap water then be a smart cookie and install one of our water filter systems that tailors water to suit your needs.

Don’t jump on the band wagon by buying Smart Water

Is it really that fashionable to buy Smart Water, or any bottled water for that matter?

It’s intrigues us as to what the public search for on the internet about Smart Water.

• Is Smart Water good for dehydration?
• Is Smart Water good for electrolytes?
• Is Smart Water good for your pH balance?
• Is Smart Water good for your stomach?
• Is Smart Water safe to drink?
• Is Smart Water safe for pregnancy?

The simple answer to all these regularly searched questions is that the water coming out of your kitchen tap is good for you. It’s becoming less fashionable to buy expensive water that’s packaged up in fancy plastic bottles. Water that claims to make us fitter, healthier and stronger!

But we’re not naïve.

As water filtration specialists we understand that there are certain elements of tap water that people do not like, such as the taste and smell of chlorine, and therefore do not want it in there.

So, what are the alternatives to Smart Water?

Better alternatives to Smart Water

There is no denying that Smart Water is a premium brand with a premium price tag.

All our water filters use high quality components, and we pride ourselves of tailoring solutions to meet individual needs.

There are a lot of water filters for home to choose from and we would confuse you if we regurgitated our whole website into this article.

But if you take some time to think about and answer our ‘top 10 questions’ before purchasing a water filter, you’ll have taken a huge step towards getting exactly what you want.  

1. What do you dislike about your tap water?
2. Are there any contaminants that you want to filter out of your water?
3. Are you on mains water or do you have a private water supply?
4. Do you want to filter your whole house or just your drinking water?
5. How big is your house?
6. How many people normally live in your house?
7. Where do you want to install the water filter, and do you have the space?
8. How much do you want to spend?
9. Are you committed to changing your water filter cartridge every 12 months?
10. Do you want to work with a company that has years of experience in water quality and 5-star customer reviews?

 These are the types of questions we’ll ask you when you contact us.

With our knowledge and experience in water filtration, we help guide you to finding a water filtration product that solves the problem you’ve got.

Our business is built on what people want, not what we think we can sell them.

We’ve already said that it would be impractical and unfair to throw every product we stock at you.

But guided by the type of answers we hear to the questions above; we thought it might be useful to offer a few different water filter system suggestions.

So, here goes!

Entry level alternative to Smart Water

If you are in the ‘don’t like the taste and smell’ of tap water camp then our high performance drinking water filter system, the Pearl T will remove the chlorine for you.

Remember, the chlorine is a cheap and effective disinfectant and must be added to mains water to destroy bacteria and viruses that may be harmful to you.

But it’s so easy to remove it if you don’t like it.

It’s a small unit with a height, width, and depth of 34cm, 14cm and 13cm respectively. So, it will fit very neatly under your kitchen sink, and you only need to change the cartridge a minimum of every 12 months.

That’s got to be a lot easier than buying bottles of Smart Water.

The Pearl T is one of our most popular entry level water filters and it also removes sediments, microplastics, PFAS (forever chemicals) and more.

What’s more, it leaves all the good minerals in there like calcium, magnesium, and potassium.

Mid-range alternative to Smart Water

If you want to take it to the next level, then one of our drinking water purification systems will get rid of any unwanted impurities and give you tap water that’s worth drinking.

Our Oyster water purifier is environmentally, cost, and maintenance friendly.

This two-stage system beauty will remove chemicals, including chlorine, endocrine disruptors, PAHs, VOCs, bacteria, chromium IV, cysts, ferric iron, lead, microplastic, and forever chemicals. To name but a few!

The Oyster water purifier is twice the width of the Pearl because it’s a dual unit with two housings and two water filter cartridges.

Our water purifier range OUTSMARTS Smart Water. You’ll have fresh, pure water on tap 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Just think of how many reusable drinking water bottles you can fill with your plentiful supply.

Specialist alternatives to Smart Water

Why stop at just treating your drinking water when you can install a water filter system that will treat your whole house.

We offer many configurations of whole house water filtration systems. Here’s just a couple to whet your appetite:

Doby taste and OneFlow whole house water filter

The Doby taste and OneFlow whole house water filter could answer your prayers when it comes to treating limescale up to 427 ppm CaCO3.

One of our best-selling hard water conditioning systems. These literally fly off our shelves.

You need a bit more room to install these units so allow for a height of 72cm, width of 60cm and depth of 18cm. It’s amazing at what space our customers have come up with to install this sought after limescale filter.

Doby water purifier

The Doby water purifier whole house water filter is just like the Oyster water purifier, only more so!

This two stage whole house water purifier is perfect for households with up to four bedrooms. It’s the same size as the Doby taste and OneFlow.

Our water purifiers remove unwanted impurities for a better, healthier alternative to systems such as reverse osmosis.

Why buy from Fountain Filters

Remember, anything is possible when it comes to your household water. You’re in control.

We’ve just given you examples of some of our best-selling products that are worthy alternatives to Smart Water.

You can choose what you want in your water and what you don’t, which we think is way smarter than anything else.

We have hundreds of very satisfied customers who have put their trust in us to help them find a solution to their water problems.

Let us help you break that addiction to Smart Water.

We are here Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm when you want to call us on 01352 838 281 with your questions.

Or if you prefer a written conversation, our helpdesk is waiting for your message.