Water that's pure and simple

To achieve cult status in New York takes some doing. To get to the stage of featuring in episodes of Friends, and being flaunted in Lenny Kravitz's latest video, for instance, is no mean feat.

But Lurisia, an Italian mineral water, has made it. Now, it is available here, and the word is spreading. There has been no marketing push or big campaign, but mineral-water snobbery is a curious thing. Restaurants like to have a unique water, while supermarkets don't like to be left behind by their competitors. Waitrose got Lurisia first, Tesco saw it next, and now Safeway and Sainsbury's have caught up.

Lurisia, they all reckon, is special, and it sells five million litres a year in New York. Five million! Think what a slice of that might do for sales. In Britain, we drink our way through 13 million litres of mineral water a year, and the market is showing no sign of saturation.

Normal people have stopped thinking of it as "designer water" and drink it for itself; it's a vital accessory for off-duty models, and it's the only thing a celeb can safely be seen drinking in the street. Lurisia has a charming old-fashioned bottle (the old-fashioned crown top needs an old-fashioned bottle-opener, but water snobs don't mind that) and a good pedigree (it was discovered in 1917 in the Italian Alps and first analysed and approved by Marie Curie).

But what really distinguishes Lurisia from the dozens of others on the shelves is the fact that it's got almost nothing in it.

Mineral waters have to contain a certain amount of mineral salts - calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, bicarbonates, chlorides, sulphates, fluorides, nitrates et al - in order to qualify for the name. The taste of a mineral water is determined by the relative balance of these salts. It all depends where the rain falls on the mountain, what kind of rocks the mountain is made of and how long the water takes to filter through the rocks, but the net result is that they're all different. The mineral content is measured in milligrammes per litre - it's all detailed on the label - and varies from the 1,200mg/litre of Badoit to the 309mg/l of Evian. Lurisia has just 35.4mg/l. It's particularly low in sodium, which is a key part of the appeal to health-conscious New Yorkers, and may prove a lure for Londoners. It tastes - as you would expect - of nothing.

It is at this point that things get confusing. Are we drinking these waters because of what they have in them or for what they haven't? Confusingly, the answer is both. If you ask a real expert such as Richard Hall, chairman of Zenith International, a business consultancy specialising in the drinks, food and packaging industries, he'll tell you that British consumers, like Americans, tend to choose mineral waters because of what they don't contain (alcohol, calories, environmental chemicals, artificial ingredients), while Europeans prefer to choose water according to the good the minerals may do.

"The minerals in water really do have a role to play," says nutritionist Ian Marber, aka the Food Doctor, "but unless we drink massive quantities they are unlikely to make a significant difference. Bear in mind that the amounts in water are far lower than those found in other mineral-rich foods, such as green vegetables or nuts." The recommended daily intake of calcium is 800mg; Perrier, which is higher in calcium than most waters, gives you 137mg/litre.

"The only thing to avoid," says Marber, "is too much sodium, because it can exacerbate high blood pressure, or indeed be the cause of it." Anything over 110mg/l is unnecessarily high (so that's a black mark for Badoit, at 150mg/l, and a thumbs up for Perrier (9mg/l) and Lurisia (2.7mg/l). "Any source of extra sodium is unnecessary," says Marber, "because we get it from so many other sources as well."

The idea that the purer a water is, the better it is for

you, is lovely, but it doesn't wash. Not that that will stop Lurisia from racing off the shelves. In terms of pure cachet, what a water has or hasn't got in it matters immensely. Galvanina, an Italian water with more minerals than most - in particular bicarbonates and calcium, which are well-known aids to digestion - is only available through hush (Geoffrey Moore's restaurant in Lancashire Court) and the Halcyon hotel, though samples have been requested by the Mandarin Oriental. Models traditionally carry bottles of Evian, and avoid anything sparkling like the plague. And keep an eye out in case any bright spark starts importing Borjomi, a water from Georgia that is reputed to have the heaviest mineral content of all, and which used to be the standard hangover cure in the Kremlin. It's an acquired taste, but it's a cult all in itself.

? Lurisia costs 89p a litre at Waitrose, Tesco, Safeway and Sainsbury. E-mail lurisia@ mineralwaters.co.uk . Ian Marber's website is thefooddoctor.com

Plastic bottles, glass bottles or tap water?
Some people feel that plastic bottles can contain chemicals that leach into the water. Yet there are hundreds of chemicals in tap water - from xenooestrogens (chemicals which mimic the effects of oestrogen on the body) to pesticides and antibiotics. However, London water is the cleanest it has been for 11 years. And filtered tap water is much cheaper than bottled.

How much should I drink?
Aim for eight glasses a day, and more if you are exercising, and another one for each cup of coffee or tea or alcohol. Drinking too much water can be counterproductive as it can dilute the minerals, including sodium, that the body needs.