National papers 2/8/1936
Henry REICH

All water is not mineral water.

About mineral water and salt substitutes.

We live in an era of substitutes and various austerity measures. Every now and then we read various reports in the newspapers, revealing what and from what is being replaced abroad. As in other countries, various substitutes are produced in our country, mostly for goods imported from abroad, which is to be welcomed for national economic reasons.

However, it is completely different with the production of substitutes and products that were never imported to us on a large scale, but on the contrary, were exported from us in large quantities. As, for example, with mineral waters, substitutes for which have been produced in abundance in our country in recent years. However, we cannot completely agree with this production, as it only harms our national economic interests. Today I just want to briefly mention substitutes for mineral waters and spring salts, as well as how they are marketed.

First of all, I will mention the so-called table water produced in our factory as a substitute for natural mineral water. These substitutes are produced on an ever-increasing scale, and it would probably be difficult to answer the question of why they are actually produced, because there is no question of their necessity as substitutes for natural and healing mineral waters. And that's because there is a complete surplus of purely natural mineral springs in our country. But they are also not produced due to the price, because nowadays many purely natural mineral waters are sold for the same price as artificial table waters.

The increase in the production of these waters can therefore only be attributed to the lack of information on the part of customers, who in most cases believe that in the bottles in which natural mineral waters have always been supplied, there can be none other than those served as such.

In addition, it often happens that the quality of mineral water is judged by customers not according to the medicinal effects, the taste of the mineral water in question or their chemical composition, but purely according to how the water sparkles. Uninformed consumers are of the opinion that the more pearls the water has, the better it is, but this is a completely wrong opinion, because the amount of pearls can be determined arbitrarily with artificial substitutes in the simple way that the water is simply mixed with a larger amount of artificial carbonic acid .

However, the situation is different with natural mineral waters, where similar manipulation cannot be carried out, as these waters contain natural carbonic acid. The difference between these two acids is that the first, artificial, is forced into the water under pressure, which results in it quickly disappearing when the bottle is opened. On the other hand, purely natural mineral waters contain naturally bound carbonic acid, which means that part of the carbonic acid is bound by some mineral substances in the form of bicarbonates. It evaporates slowly and after a long time with the bottle open we can still observe its traces in the water.

It is the same in our stomach. If the acid is released too quickly from the water, there is a danger that the radical process may cause the stomach to decrease, increase or expand. With natural mineral waters, a similar danger is excluded, because these waters contain carbonic acid and possibly indigestible residues in our stomach, it only slowly separates and precisely because of its slow process, it has a very good effect on the digestion of food and possibly indigestible residues in our stomach.

Many of you have probably experienced hunger after drinking this or that mineral water, which is precisely the result of experiencing natural mineral water and the associated good digestion. Nevertheless, I do not want to claim that mineral water, perhaps with a significant content of natural carbonic acid, is not a suitable medicine for this or that disease. I leave that to the doctors and recommend once again that mineral water should not be judged by how it sparkles, but by how the doctor recommends it for this or that disease.

Other mineral waters that also deserve notice are the so-called radioactive waters. In recent times, there has been a big scandal that, as soon as some water contains only a small amount of mache units, the name that the water is highly radioactive is already used on leaflets, labels and prospectuses with striking graphic markings. However, we can best get an idea of ​​what it actually looks like if we compare their radioactivity with water that is really radioactive, for example with Jáchymov water.

All these waters, although their radioactivity for so minute a quantity can have no effect at all in healing, contain 40 mache units, which would certainly be a fair figure if the scale of mache units was read as many uninformed customers mentally believe, from one to one hundred.

Therefore, in order to be able to properly compare the radioactivity of these waters, we must state the content of Jáchymovská water, which contains 600 mache units. However, this radioactivity is only relevant when using water at the source, not with water sent, because the radioactivity disappears from the water in 3-4 days.

Just as there are substitutes for natural, mineral water, natural medicinal salts are also substituted. What is the difference between real mineral salts and artificial ones, we can best be convinced by the opinions of world-renowned experts, who claim that natural salt is inimitable and cannot be replaced by any artificial salts.