I love sparkling water. Give me the “hurty water” always, please. Until I got a Sodastream, I resorted to buying San Pellegrino because I couldn’t bear all the plastic wastage of the cheaper bottles. Now I think about it, going through that much glass prob also wasn’t the best for the environment.
I don’t know if it’s the gimmick of bubbles on my tongue, or the fact I truly believe sparkling water “tastes” better than regular water, but I always went through glass after glass of the stuff at fancy restaurants, where I would barely touch my flat water at home.
I knew plenty of people who raved about Sodastream machines, those bubble-making bad boys that mean endless sparkling water in your kitchen. For research purposes, I got a loaner machine from Sodastream to see what all the fuss was about.
There are various types of Sodastream machine. The cheapest is Spirit, which is a manual machine:
The one I have however is the Sodastream Source Power, which is on the exxier side but is pretty damn great.
Basically, the difference with Source Power is that it will automatically bubble up your water to perfection. With Spirit, you have to press a button on top 3-5 times to get your desired bubble amount, which isn’t like, hard to do but I find the bubbliness is more consistent with Source Power.
Do I sound insane? Why yes, I have lost my damn mind in iso and now have an obsession with my Sodastream.
Okay, moving on to the water drinking bit. Like I said, I find I’ll consume far more water when it’s sparkling than when it’s flat. But isn’t that… bad for your teeth or something?
Possibly, but not to the level you thought. I did some research – there were two concerns with people drinking copious amounts of sparkling drinks. The first was that your bone mineral density would be compromised – yikes.
But that was based on erroneous information. Basically, caffeine-based sparkly drinks can have an effect on bone mineral density. Something to do with calcium levels – the point is, it’s not sparkling water that does it, but the caffeine.
The other rumour I’ve heard flying around is that drinking sparkly stuff all the time can destroy your tooth enamel.
This is partly true. Basically, the mouth has a pH of 7.5. According to BBC, carbonating water, which usually has a 6-7 pH, drops it to 5 pH.
But! If you then add flavour to it, especially citric acid, you cop a low 2.7 pH which is super bad for teeth if you were drinking that all the time. For the record, orange juice also has a 2.7 pH level, so it’s not “never drink lemonade” it’s more “drink it sparingly”.
But when it comes to sparkling water that’s plain, the effect is 100 times less than flavoured sparkling water. Basically – you wouldn’t want to be drinking fizzy water all day, every day for the rest of your life, but it’s not actually that bad for your teeth.
Phew! Okay so back to the Sodastream – another reason I think I drank so much using it was because you can get extra bottles, which I did, and fizz them up then pop them in the fridge. Or leave them at your desk. I got into a habit of having three bottles of sparkling water on my desk, which equated to around 2.5 litres. Generally you’re encouraged to drink 2 litres of water a day as a woman, 2.5 as a man. So this meant I was smashing through my required water consumption with very little effort. And I LOVE putting no effort into shit.
My verdict? If you love fizzy water, a Sodastream is a brilliant investment. They work out to be pretty cheap long-term – one gas bottle will get you 60 litres of fizz, and if you take your empty to select stores, you can swap for a new one at a discounted price. They also sell the gas at Woolies and other convenient spots, so it’s not like “venture into the CBD” or anything.
But predominantly I just think it’s good for the environment if you’re finding yourself buying big on the 99c plastic bottled waters at the shops. We’ve gotta start thinking of ways we can minimise our carbon footprint, and look – if you have a sparkling water habit, this is one way to have it without a huge impact on the globe.
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