KALAK WATER
Report of the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry
The following report, submitted by a member of the Council’s committee on chemistry, was endorsed by the committee and adopted by the Council:
Kalak Water, sold by the Kalak Water Company, Inc., New York, is an artificial mineral water said to be made by adding certain salts to carbonated, distilled water and supersaturating with the gas under pressure. Such merit as it may possess by virtue of sodium bicarbonate and sodium phosphate is quite insufficient to warrant the extravagant claims made in the advertising pamphlets.
According to the analysis furnished, the water contains, in 1,000,000 parts (milligrams per liter) the following:
| Sodium carbonate | 4049.0 |
| Sodium phosphate | 238.5 |
| Sodium chloride | 806.3 |
| Calcium carbonate | 578.2 |
| Magnesium carbonate | 48.9 |
| Potassium chloride | 47.9 |
Among the many misleading statements found in the advertising pamphlet bearing the title “A Brief for Physiological Alkalescence” these may be quoted:
“The calcium content of Kalak is over 100% greater than ever before placed in solution in any vehicle, a fact of supreme importance when the unique alkalinizing power of the alkaline salts of this metal is considered; the ratio of calcium metabolism to its enormous waste in pregnancy, the diseases of infancy and childhood and the rapidly growing group of ‘acidoses’ make its availability in Kalak of double value.”
The first part of this statement is untrue; the last part is muddled and without much meaning. Evidently the “acidosis” fad is to be overworked as was the old “uric acid diathesis,” of unsavory memory. Again this: