Walk past the drink fridges of any of the restaurants, cafeterias and cafés on campus and there are myriad of choices: sugary sweet, brightly colored, no sugar, no caffeine, high caffeine, guarana, acai berries, entire celery stalks and bunches of carrots squeezed into 8-ounce bottles.

If we were to believe everything listed on drink labels, the food industry would be in dire straits; we would need only a couple of Glacéau Vitaminwaters and a 5-hour Energy to survive for the rest of our lives.

The most astounding of this cornucopia of plastic bottles is the Glacéau Smartwater.

Smartwater is in the same line of drinks as Vitaminwater: the weak-Kool-Aid-tasting-but-has-more-sugar-than-a-can-of-coke drinks endorsed by rapper 50 Cent who was given a rumored 10 percent of the company for his efforts, earning himself a cool $100 million in the process.

Let’s get down to what we’re really drinking when we drink smart, when we drink Smartwater. Smartwater is, as it says on the labels, “vapor distilled water and added electrolytes for taste.”

Yes, it has electrolytes added not for performance as in Gatorade, but instead added “for taste.” The electrolytes are calcium chloride, magnesium chloride and potassium bicarbonate. Tasty.

But the thing that makes me question the IQ of this Smartwater is that the levels of electrolytes are so low that they could have only been added for taste, as they are inconsequential to your body’s performance.

There is indeed a water quality report on the Glacéau website, but there is no mention of the amounts of added electrolytes, just the components that have been removed. One liter — or four servings of Smartwater — has 10 milligrams of potassium, 10 milligrams of calcium and 15 milligrams of magnesium, according to one blogger who claims to have participated in correspondence with Glacéau regarding the electrolyte content of Smartwater.

Compare this to Evian bottled water that has 1 milligram of potassium, 80 milligrams of calcium and 26 milligrams of magnesium per liter. In fact, water straight out of your kitchen tap in Ames has 2 milligrams of potassium, 152 milligrams of calcium and 11 milligrams of magnesium.

But despite the arguably inconsequential amounts of electrolytes, at least we know the water is vapor distilled. Going through vapor distillation must make it a superior bottled water, right?

This water hasn’t been stimulated by trade winds or trickled down French Alps, it’s all American water. And when I say all American, I mean it is municipal water flowing through the pipes of the Whitestone, N.Y. Smartwater factory that is boiled, purified, collected, funneled into bottles and sold at much higher prices than you’d pay to boil your own water at home.

Really, I don’t think the smart of Smartwater refers to the water at all, I really think it refers to the brain behind the operation: J. Darius Bikoff.

Bikoff, current CEO of Energy Brands Inc., established the company in 1996. Although you may not have heard of this company, or Bikoff, it was purchased by Coca-Cola in 2007 for $4.1 billion; an amount higher than the current GDP of the entire country of Barbados.

Energy Brands also trades as Glacéau, parent company of Vitaminwater and Smartwater. Bikoff has retained control of his multibillion-dollar company; established less than 15 years ago when he was feeling run down.

Bikoff explained the beginnings of Vitaminwater interview with The Times in 2008.

“I was feeling run down one day, standing in my kitchen in New York. I wanted to stave off a cold, and I took [a vitamin C tablet] … and I opened some mineral water and drank, and I thought, yeah, this is nice, vitamins and water. It got me thinking.”

And as Bikoff got to thinking, he knew he needed a catchy name to go with his clever product. Perhaps it was his time spent in London and Paris that inspired him, but Bikoff gave his company a completely false French name.

Exotic and sophisticated-sounding Glacéau is not a real French word. To break it down it is the combination of Glacé meaning frozen, and eau meaning water. So, en anglais, its name is frozenwater. Not quite as impressive but perfect to go with his clever marketing scheme of selling enhanced water.

Enhanced water means not only that the water has any of the naturally occurring mineral stripped out of it through purification, but in the case of Vitaminwater, it has sugars, colors, minerals, nutrients and flavorings added; making it actually less healthy than it would have been were you to take the vitamin C tablet and a swig of mineral water that inspired this new category of beverages.

It is just this problem — the idea that these sugary beverages are healthy — that has brought a case of misleading the public against Coca-Cola and Vitaminwater. Coca-Cola’s response?

“No consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking Vitaminwater was a healthy beverage.”

So while we are marketed one message, we are expected to understand or know the complete opposite because, according to Coca Cola, it would be unreasonable to believe the hype.

There is no doubt Bikoff is a fantastic business man, and his entrepreneurial feats are the epitome of American capitalist success: A man creating a company worth more than $4 billion in fewer than 15 years, affecting the enormous beverage industry and popular culture in the process.

But in the end, he is a business man, not a physician, selling you a product, not health. Smartwater is a healthier choice than Vitaminwater as it doesn’t have excess sugars, artificial color or flavorings, but it doesn’t have much else to it to make it healthier than regular water.

So before you pay too much for that bottled water, think about what is inside. Is it really that much better for you than plain, free, tap water? Are you paying for a superior beverage or clever marketing? Because once you open the lid, you may find that you’re getting less than what you paid for.