There must be some well-off people living in my home town of Bedford, because we have an out-of-town Waitrose. We also have several Aldi and Lidl stores for those with shallower pockets, and I tend to do my shopping at the former. I drink bottled water when I can, not wishing to consume the female hormones that allegedly contaminate tap water. I normally buy Aldi’s still spring water, bottled at source, the Chase spring in LIchfield, Staffordshire. In common with most bottled water, the information panel has “typical values” of the content such as calcium, nitrate etc. The “pH at source” is given as 7.8, mildly alkaline. As the store had recently run out of still water, I bought their sparkling water. Also coming from the Chase spring, all the “typical values” are identical, apart from one. The “pH at source” is given as 5.5, acidic – the pH differential of 2.3 indicates that the sparkling water is more than 100x more acidic than the still water. Now my assumption is that the acidity simply results from the addition of carbon dioxide, which produces carbonic acid. If so, the “pH at source” should clearly be changed to 7.8, with an additional line saying that after carbonation, the pH is 5.5. When I have a sensible response from Aldi on this matter, I’ll let you know.

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