What's the deal with salts and minerals, such as magnesium sulfate, in bottled drinking water?

It’s called mineral water for a reason.

Natural mineral water comes from under ground springs where the water absorbs minerals and gases as it makes its way to the surface. The different composition of minerals in different brands of water give the water different taste. The amount of minerals in the water can be dangerous if they are too high but in lower amounts that you find in bottled water they shouldn’t be a problem.

Dasani is actually tap water (ie the stuff that you would get if you filled you glass from the tap). They filter it and then add trace minerals to it and then charge you more than you pay for petrol. The launch of dasini in the UK was such a failure that it was withdrawn from the market within a month as it contained too much bromate. Amusingly the bromate wasn’t in the tap water before coca-cola processed it, it was added by them. (It also didn’t help that the adverts stated that dasani added spunk).

Minerals in water give it a better taste (sometimes). Most are not harmful in small amounts.

Dasani and Aquafina are both overpriced tap water, nothing special.

I’ll let Jim Gaffigan explain it to you.

The human body can’t survive without the minerals in water. But tap water is just fine in many developed regions of the world. No need there to buy expensive bottled water.

tap water may be safer than bottled water