The news site Vox published an article “How we stopped counting calories and learned to love Spindrift: This popular seltzer has a few calories. It says a lot about how we think about health today.” Written by Rachel Sugar, the long-form piece has a section, “The Great Seltzer Resurgence,” that begins with an interview with little old me.

The idea that seltzer is a health drink is not new. Carbonated water has “always walked the line between a medicine and a beverage,” writes seltzer aficionado Barry Joseph in Seltzertopia: The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary Drink. Bubbling forth from certain springs, naturally filtered and carbonated mineral water was believed to have curative properties for centuries before it was ever bottled, and were you both ill and wealthy, your doctor might prescribe you a trip to the spa, to soak and also sip.

With bottling, the spa could come to you, and so seltzer became the luxury-healing hybrid, like the 19th-century version of wheatgrass shots. Schweppes, the first seltzer bottler in England, promised it could “reduce fever, ease ‘biliousness’ (indigestion), and address nervous afflictions and ‘the debilitating consequences of hard living,” Joseph writes.

Perrier claimed to awaken the senses — and doesn’t it? — while Poland Spring billed itself as an antidote to kidney problems. Could it do these things? Sort of, maybe, in some cases. It is true that these naturally occurring seltzers were laced with different minerals, and that some of these minerals had desirable effects: Magnesium and sulfate could make a laxative; water from an iodine-rich spring might, in fact, improve the function of the thyroid.

I recommend spending a few minutes and reading the whole piece here.