We all know how the story goes, bottled water costs a small fortune in most restaurants – the mark up is incredibly high and the culture of shame surrounding asking for tap water is rife. Giles Coren a food critic over at The Times is claiming that the tides are turning on the bottled water craze, and this time the government are paying attention.

Bottled water or as The Times refer to it ‘Bling-Bling’ is starting to take a back seat to tap water, largely through raised awareness of the environmental implications of drinking and transporting the stuff. The Times have some great stats on bottled water consumption and reckon that we Brits have spent over 2 billion on consuming 3 billion litres of bottled water – on top of the money we already spend on water rates and bills! The main concern is that the water is packaged in unsympathetic packaging and often travels all around the world for consumption – knocking up a lot of air miles.

So have fashions really changed? Are bottled water drinkers really becoming the next restaurant smokers – those people you never want to be seated next to? Phil Woolas the Environment minister seems to think it is pretty nonsensical to consume so much bottled water when we have perfectly good, clean water flowing from our taps. It will be interesting to see how this is reflected in restaurants and other eating establishments, to see if you are offered tap water first over bottled water or will the tap water shame remain?

Check out the article there are some great comments, creating quite a debate.

Photo supplied by Wespionage over on Flickr