Most bottled water (about 40 percent), even though it purports to come from springs high in the mountains or some other pure and earthly source, is actually distilled water. This means it's been heated to steam and then cooled back into water again, removing any impurities along the way but also taking out all the minerals it once contained as well.

Or it could be filtered, although filtering is a different process. Either way, bottled water isn't always, well, nature's way.

And it's not like "regular water--tap water, that is.

Tap water is water out of the faucet. It hasn't been distilled. It may have been filtered; it probably has been treated in some way, either with fluorides, supposedly to help keep your teeth from falling apart, or chlorine, to destroy harmful bacteria. Or maybe something else.

If you live in an area where the water is "hard"--that is, high in calcium and other minerals--your water also may be "softened" by passing it through a filtering system that removes the elements that make hard water hard. Home water softening systems often are recharged with brine--salt water--so their water may be slightly salty after a recharge. Bad for those on low-sodium diets.

Distilling water also removes any natural taste the water might have had. Bottled water thus doesn't have any. That helps coffee taste better, among other things.

But there is really more to the bottled water craze than water's content or taste. And bottled water has one great advantage. It's easy to handle. Putting water in plastic bottles allows distribution in small amounts. It also makes water, at least bottled water, a lot more expensive than just plain old tap water. Bottled water's price keeps going up. It is now above $1 a bottle, or approximately $1 for 12 fluid ounces.

But it has become the "in" thing to do--walk about with a bottle of water in one's hand, taking an occasional slug to quench a parched throat or maybe just because everyone else is doing the same thing.

My children, now all adults, are great bottled water drinkers. They tend toward quart bottles. They drink a lot. I guess it helps. They seem healthy and well-watered.

Just how bottled water became so important in American life is difficult to determine. Apparently, though, the bottled water craze started with the French--or, at least, it started in Europe. Water sources in European countries once were as suspect as they may now be in Central or South America.

In Greece, for instance, as soon as you sit down at a table in a restaurant the first things you're served are bottled water and bread. The bread is free, but you usually get charged for the water.

It's not quite that way in France, or wasn't the last time I was there, but bottled water--sometimes called mineral water for some strange reason--is still much in evidence. Usually, it's either Evian or Perrier, the two biggest bottlers in France.

Suppliers like Evian and Perrier began bottling more and more water in the land of wine until they pretty much cornered the market. Inevitably, like many other things French, bottled water got imported to America.

It caught on here, slowly at first, and then as baby boomers went farther and farther afield in their travels its use became more and more widespread. Now it's all over the nation.

For a long time bottled water retained a tinge of Frenchness, as if you were sipping wine and not water. It went along with America's growing fascination with continental cooking. Drinking bottled water was a little like being able to speak French so a French person could understand you.

Well, sort of, anyway. I remember once flying to Europe on Air France and being served a tiny bottle of Evian with my in-flight meal, about enough to fill a wine glass.

I had hoped for Perrier instead of Evian because Perrier comes also in a fizzy carbonated version, but when I asked for it the flight attendant looked at me with disdain and pretended not to understand English.

Today bottled water is sold almost everywhere in America--in grocery and liquor stores, at football and basketball games, in all kinds of bottles, and from all kinds of bottlers. They would like you to believe that what you're drinking has been dipped ice-cold out of a rushing Sierra Nevada stream, though the truth is that most Sierra streams these days aren't safe to drink from without a filter. They're polluted in many places with guardia, a microbe that causes intense intestinal distress.

But the illusion that pure mountain water is good for you persists, and collectively we slurp up an amazing amount of bottled water each year.

And, of course, there's nothing wrong with that. Water, even bottled water, won't rust your pipes. It keeps your kidneys functioning properly and makes you hydrated.

But it all makes me wonder: What's the next thing on the social horizon? Is it, too, going to be a beverage? And how much is it going to cost?