New York has got something that Paris doesn't have...water.

New York State Department of Health announced that NYC won the coveted title for best-tasting drinking water, which beat the record when we came in 2nd earlier that year during an unscientific blind taste testing. But while many just simply don't feel the need to filter our water through a Brita, little do thye know whats lurking in 'The Best tasting water'. Put on your seatbelts.

Copepods have been used successfully in Vietnam to control disease-bearing mosquitoes such as Aedes aegypti that transmit dengue fever and other human parasitic diseases. These microscop guys are in your water!

The copepods can be added to water-storage containers where the mosquitoes breed and can survive for periods of months in the containers, if the containers are not completely drained by their users. They will attack, kill, and eat the younger 1st and 2nd instar larvae of the mosquitoes. This biological control method is complemented by community trash removal and recycling to eliminate other possible mosquito-breeding sites. Because the water in these containers is drawn from uncontaminated sources such as rainfall, there is little risk of contamination by cholera bacteria, and in fact no cases of cholera have been linked to copepods introduced into water-storage containers. Trials using copepods to control container-breeding mosquitoes are underway in several other countries, including Thailand and the southern United States.

The matter of copepods in the water supply, however, has raised a problem for Jewish people who observe Kashrut in that In other words Copepods, being crustaceans, are not kosher, and are not small enough to be ignored. very of copepods in the New York water supply in the Summer of 2004 in particular caused significant debates among many observant Jews to buy filters for their water. But it's sooooooo tasty!