This September, Brooke Shields had a rough night at L’Artusi in Manhattan. She’d been preparing for her one-woman show, “Previously Owned by Brooke Shields,” by hydrating. A lot. Shortly after she entered the restaurant, everything started to go black. She was having a grand mal seizure. “I had had too much water,” she told Glamour. “I flooded my system, and I drowned myself.” Luckily, L’Artusi’s sommelier called an ambulance, and Shields made a full recovery at the hospital. “I didn't know. I just kept thinking I was hydrating," she said in a later interview.
You can hardly blame Shields for her overhydration. Drinking more water is good for us we’re always told, and hydration is the key to health. Drinking enough water each day has been a pillar of wellness advice for years, but in 2023, something tipped hydration culture into overdrive. The viral water brand Liquid Death is a cult favorite of Gen Z, and Liquid IV, which bills itself as a “hydration multiplier” and is used as a preemptive hangover cure, claims to be closing in on a billions dollars in net sales. Prime Hydration, the beverage line created by social media giants Logan Paul and KSI, is also on track to pass a billion dollars in sales this year, even as experts raise eyebrows at its caffeine content. A Le Creuset-like fandom has sprung up around those enormous and apparently indestructible Stanley reusable water bottles, and the widely panned AirUp bottle somehow went viral on TikTok, where #WaterTok also surged in popularity. In 2023, it seems we were thirstier than ever.
You might know Ophora water—”water for wellness,” as its website proclaims in large letters—from one of several TikToks that went viral this year. It’s sold at Erewhon for a bold $26. It is the ultimate Water Plus, the apex of uber-hydration. It starts with purity: Ophora claims to filter out contaminants like microplastics and potentially harmful chemicals that many other filtered waters still contain. It balances pH to make the water alkaline, and the big sell is its “hyper-oxygenation”—which means oxygen is stabilized in the h2O at a density of 40 parts per million, the company says. Ophora claims to have patents pending for the technology it uses to infuse the water with “high levels of molecular oxygen,” which creates water that allegedly increases energy, decreases inflammation, enhances cell detoxification, and reduces sports recovery time.
Ophora is more than just $26 bottled water: The company will install a complete water filtration system in your home, or set you up with an entire hot tub or pool filled with nothing but Ophora water. “The skin is the largest organ on your body,” a spokesperson says earnestly in one video. “Imagine soaking in a hot tub that's 102 degrees that has 30 parts per million of oxygen penetrating your body.” That’s a lot of penetration. Ophora says drinking and bathing in its water will lead to benefits including more energy and less sickness. Testimonials claim the water has led to weight loss, improved metabolism, and the sensation that “the ocean doesn’t feel as cold.” Meanwhile, water experts are skeptical.
For four days, I only drank Ophora water. Its bold claims of being “the world’s healthiest water” rang in my ears as I hoped that true hydration would be all it’s been promised to be. I had four jugs of 64 ounces that I would drink over four days. Near the cap, each jug had a single loop big enough for one finger to slip in—not ergonomic, but perfect for tilting it up to your mouth for a quick swill. I recorded my weight, body fat percentage, and resting heart rate at the start of my journey, feeling optimistic. (...)
With a pH level of 8, Ophora water is slightly basic. Studies on the effects of alkaline water on the body have shown mixed results—some studies (funded by companies that sell alkaline water) suggest it could improve hydration in athletes, but experts are doubtful of other claims, like detoxification. Still, I felt vindicated to learn that nausea, stomach aches, and even vomiting are side effects to drinking alkaline water as it can upset the pH balance of your body. Were four days of intense stomach pain simply the price I had to pay for the ocean to feel less chilly? (...)
Even if I did, not even Ophora could fill the colossal role we’ve created for hydration. Anistacia Barrak-Barber is a water sommelier (yes, it’s a real thing) and holds a Water Center Certificate from Columbia University—basically, she loves water and has studied its effect on our bodies. Barack-Barber is a great proponent in the supposed healing properties of mineral waters—specifically as it pertains to digestion and the absorption of minerals our body needs, like calcium. (Some mineral waters have been shown to aid in digestion, and have increased bioavailable calcium.) When it comes to Ophora, though, she’s a non-believer. “The scientific testing doesn't really bear out what Ophora promises,” she wrote in an email. Some research seems to agree. A 2006 study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine concluded that “oxygenated water fails both quantitative analysis and practical physiological tests of exercise performance and recovery,” and that “significant intestinal absorption of O2 is unsubstantiated.” In other words, it acted a lot like normal water.
There have always been those who proselytize about the healing effects of water, but bottled water didn’t take off in America until the 1970s, when Perrier essentially created the market. In the 2000s, the big beverage makers Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola got into the bottled water game with familiar brands like Dasani and Aquafina. As more people became distrustful of tap water (rightfully so, in some regions), and diet culture became more prevalent in the American psyche, waters branded as speciality and small-batch, like Fiji Water, became more coveted. In the mid-2010s, brands like SmartWater that offer features like pH balance and added electrolytes defined what optimized water might look like—that is, water formulated for athletic performance. Now, we get our hydration from any number of products, from sports drinks to electrolyte powders to ionized, antioxidant-producing water.
by Sam Stone, Bon Appétit | Read more:
Image: Qianhui Yu[ed. See also: Why People Are Camping Out at Target for the Valentine’s Stanley Tumbler; and, #WaterTok: What Ever Happened to Just Drinking Water? (NYT); and, We’ve Reached Peak Beverage (BA):]
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"At seemingly every supermarket and drugstore, I’ve tripped over a dozen hard seltzer displays spilling into the aisles. I kept my cool through the influx of cactus, hop, birch, aloe, probiotic, and adaptogenic waters; through the canned highballs, sake spritzes, and margaritas (a few quite good), flavored lattes, sparkling cold brews, and redundantly conceived “hard” kombuchas. I didn’t even overreact that time I brought home an energy drink I’d mistaken for tangerine-flavored sparkling water—mostly due to humiliation that I somehow missed ENERGIZE shouting in all caps on the box. (...)The global ready-to-drink (RTD) market reached $89 billion as of 2022, according to research company Transparency Market Research. The firm also estimates that the North American RTD beverage market will hit somewhere between $13.9 and $22.3 billion by the end of this year. Between 2020 and 2021, premade, spirits-based RTD makers increased revenues by 42 percent in the US, no doubt buoyed by recurring periods of at-home happy hours due to the pandemic."
