Save up to $1000 while Greatly Improving Your Health

People spend so much money to improve their health whether its gym memberships, juicing machines, expensive health foods and much more. But what if I told you there is a way to actually save money while improving your health?

The solution is simple. Drink tap water and plenty of it! Of course it isn't a complete replacement for regular exercise and a healthy diet but water is the very foundation of a healthy lifestyle.

I’m no scientist so here is an excellent list of 12 reasons you should drink more water. My personal top three health reasons for drinking water are:

· Healthier skin
· Increased outflow of toxins
· Hangover prevention/medication

The main alternatives to water are pop, milk, orange juice, tea and coffee. These options, although enjoyable, do not provide any substantial health benefit (with the exception of coffee and tea) and may even adversely impact your health if they are not consumed in moderation.

There is no reason that in the year 2014 you shouldn't be aware of the absolute lack of anything beneficial in pop. There are actually many health detriments if pop is consumed on a regular basis.

Orange juice and other juices contain larges amounts of sugar which is excellent if you are a diabetic and have low blood sugar. Chances are that you are not and the sugar spike from juice is detrimental to your health and energy levels even if the sugar is naturally occurring. What about that 100% daily intake of Vitamin C from one glass? Well first of all that vitamin C is not naturally occurring since all the nutrients in the juice have broken down by the time it hit the store shelf and second is that if you eat any fruits or vegetables at all you are likely getting your intake of vitamin C for the day anyway. Better eat an actual orange which contains phytonutrients and other benefits in addition to vitamin C.

For milk, I'm going to have to side with Harvard University and the legion of “nutritionists, vegans and vocal Hollywood A-listers like Gywneth Paltrow” that came before. Harvard states that milk isn't as beneficial for your health as thought and once again you are better eating real foods that contain calcium (a list can be found at the bottom of the article).

I hate to even acknowledge the myth of counting calories but apparently it does work for losing weight (likely due to more controlled portion sizes) and it’s the final health based argument I have for avoiding pop, milk and orange juice and sticking to 0 Cal water.

OK, now that I've taken out all the competitors, I am going to set my cross hairs on bottled water. While I can’t find any sources that say that bottled water is better than tap water, there is a mixture of sources that argue either they are the same or tap water is better. The truth is that a significant percentage of bottled water actually comes from municipal sources and that even if the water comes from a spring, the mineral content is not significantly different from our taps. The decisive factor between tap water and bottled water really comes down to the cost (discussed in the next section) and environmental costs of the plastic and shipping the product to grocery stores.

But wait, I forgot coffee and tea! For simplicities sake, I'm going to discard tea and coffee because of some costing challenges as well as the fact that each comes with its own list of benefits (assuming you hold off on the sugar). To appease those coffee and tea lovers why not learn about bulletproof coffee and the benefits of drinking green tea.

OK, I understand all of you are getting impatient. I've convinced you by now that water is the elixir of life for all of humanity. But what about that thousand bucks I'm supposed to save you. Here is my cost analysis:

Type	Waterloo Municipal Tap Water	Bottled Water	Juice	Milk	Pop
Cost Per Litre ($)	0.0016	0.25**-1.45***	3.84****	2.33****	0.99****
Yearly Cost at 2 Litres/Day*	1.17	183-1059	2803	1700	723

*For simplicity’s sake, I assume you require 2 litres of any type of fluid a day
**Cost of 24 pack of no name 500mL water at Zehrs is $2.99 (Source: http://www.zehrs.ca/)
***Average price of a water bottle in the USA. Here I am assuming the average sized water bottle is a litre although chances are it is less.
****Average retail prices in April 2014 according to StatsCan

The chart assumes each category is the only category you are drinking every day, but the reality of the situation is that most people are drinking a combination of 2 to all 5 of those in any given week. Also consider the additional costs of ordering anything except for tap water (which is free) at a restaurant or additional costs of the different form factors you buy your beverages in (usually for purposes of convenience). What about the environmental impacts you create by consuming beverages from plastic containers?

By minimizing or even eliminating your consumption of bottle water, juice, milk and pop it is possible to save up to $1000 a year and increase your health substantially.

As a little extra motivation for you: Think of all the things you can do with a 1000 extra bucks in your pocket.