What's the go with La Croix and how does it compare with H20?

I’ve been off the piss for a while now… a bit over a month and yeah I had a couple beers watching the baseball the other night, but fuck it, I had a couple of hot dogs too.  To make life easier in the social melting pot that is Venice Beach, I’ve been heading out to most places with a cool 12 pack of La Croix strung under my arm and I’ve copped a bit of shit for it too.
 
Now that I’ve kicked the first month of being sober my friends seemed to have moved beyond their feelings of guilt around me, the social pressure has kind of wound down now and I feel like I’m pretty much in the clear in regards to continuing my pursuit of being the biggest pussy in Venice.  So I went on a quest to find something wrong with these little green and pink slugs.  There has to be something in this stuff that isn’t good for you, otherwise I may as well not even go out at night! What’s it going to do to me?  Cook my liver, demineralize my bones, maybe it would even dehydrate me for god’s sake!  But alas, there’s not a whole lot I could find that would take me off my high horse and send me to the kindergarten cot, where I could watch my friends sipping on the heavy stuff.  Nothing except for one little ingredient listed as “natural flavors”. 
 
“Natural flavors” is a clever cluster of words which when dug into could equate to any number of over a thousand synthetic ingredients, not regulated by the FDA but supposedly derived from a natural source.  Companies can mix in synthetic additives, like solvents to make the flavor blend well (incidental additives) and are not required to disclose what these are.  In high concentrations, these can be harmful, but it’s not known how much.  
 
So it seems like there isn't a whole lot that's wrong with La Croix but what about those of you who are solely drinking it all the time instead of plain and simple regular water?  I can’t help but to think that that’s not ok and I’ve heard some schools of thought say that nothing hydrates like water hydrates, not even tea.  On the other hand, I’ve heard different camps say that we are gaining more hydration than we think due to the water content that is in our foods.  Regardless of what people say, I have found that Paul Chek’s guidelines on how much water you should drink work well for me and here’s how you can find out what you should be drinking too; Take your weight in pounds and drink half that amount in ounces per day.  If you get by on the metric system, take your weight in kilograms and multiply that amount by 0.033 and you will get the amount in liters that you should drink per day.
 
While we are at it, here a few other water drinking tips that I think are worthwhile mentioning.  Don’t drink tap water… It contains chlorine, which is added to kill bacteria but unfortunately when it makes its way into your body, it kills the bacteria in there too, good and bad which can lead to the same digestive issues that send you to the kombucha aisle in the supermarket. 
 
If you’re peeing a lot, look at the mineral content of your water and aim for something what has a total dissolved mineral content of around 300 parts per million or more.  If your water bottle doesn’t tell you, then it probably doesn’t contain a lot of minerals.  Don’t worry though, it’s any easy fix.  I always add a pinch or two of a good quality sea salt, like the Celtic Sea Salt that can be found in most supermarkets.  This will add more minerals to your water, helping you to hang onto it by moving the water into the cells where it is needed.  There are a whole lot of other reasons why we should be making sure we are getting enough salt in our diet, but I’ll save that for another day.
 
Lastly, don’t drink a whole lot of water when you are eating a meal.  It will dilute your digestive juices, making the whole process less effective.  Have a glass around 15 minutes before you eat so that you can hydrate the gut lining and wait around the same amount of time after you finish your meal.  Small sips are ok, just don’t overdo it.