by BRIAN LOCKHART

Six large glasses of water a day – or maybe it was eight.

That's a theory someone came up with several years ago, about the amount of water your body needs to stay healthy.

It sort of made sense, because after all, you are about 60 per cent water.

That theory sparked the great plastic water bottle craze, with people always carrying a bottle of water. Have a drink while driving, have a drink at your desk, have a drink in the middle of a speech you are giving at the Loyal Order of Water Buffalo's lodge meeting.

It became pretty normal.

I'm guessing the six glasses a day water theory was leaked to the media by a smart marketer at a water bottling company in an attempt to boost sales.

If so, it was one of the best marketing campaigns in history.

Sales of bottled water skyrocketed.

There was also a group of people who didn't trust tap water. And yet, it turns out the bottled water they were drinking came from the municipal water supply in Mississauga.

When caught, the company that bottled the tap water insisted it had a special filtration process that purified the water before bottling, even though the city already has rigorous standards to ensure it supplies clean drinking water to its citizens.

Either way, people were now paying for a bottle of water they could get by turning on the faucet at home.

The downside to the bottled water craze is that, for some reason, apparently a lot of people who drink bottled water never think to dispose of the bottle correctly.

Sure, everyone says they don't throw the bottle away; however, there are billions and billions of water bottles lying in ditches, squashed in parking lots, blowing and tumbling across open areas, and creating a plastic storm in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

So, someone is lying about properly disposing of their plastic water bottle.

The funny thing is, after all the billions and billions of bottles of water sold to people who are trying to stay healthy, someone came up with a new theory of sorts.

It was reasoned that if your body needs water, you have an internal ‘gas gauge' of sorts: you get thirsty.

There's the actual science behind it all – if you feel thirsty, drink a glass of water and your feelings of thirst will go away!

If you don't feel thirsty, your system is currently happy with the amount of water you have in your body.

I think the same people who came up with the six glasses of water a day theory may also have been behind the Coca-Cola scandal a few years ago.

The Coca-Cola company, out of the blue in 1985, – read here, several months, maybe years of planning – announced they were changing the formula of its soft drink and renaming it ‘the NEW Coke.'

Why in the world would you change the formula of your product that made it a huge global success, and has kept the company going for, at that time, around 100 years?

If you did decide to make a change, why announce it? Companies make subtle changes in their products all the time, but they don't tell the public.

If the public likes it, they will keep buying it, even if they notice that a company is now using sugar grown on the south side of the island rather than the north side.

I tried the New Coke. Tasted pretty good to me, but slightly sweeter.

After the Coca-Cola company announced the New Coke, there was public outrage.

The company was receiving 1,500 letters of complaint per day, demanding that the original Coke formula be restored, and the story made international headlines.

Eventually, the original formula was restored, and all was well in the world of the best mix to go with your Jack Daniels!

It has been speculated in the years following the Great Coke Scandal that the company realized that the best way to make people want something is to take it away.

If that was their strategy, it worked. Coca-Cola is bigger than ever.

When it comes to keeping hydrated, I follow the Flintstones' thoughts on H2O.

Barney: (After a scammer tried to sell him something.) “Hey Fred, what kind of water do you use?”

Fred: “There is only one kind of water – wet!”