Holy Water

Are you feeling burnt out? Have you been putting in the hours, grinding away, but aren’t seeing any gains in your life? Does your boss suck and your job suck and you don’t even have a job in the first place, which sucks? Are you yearning for freedom? Have you heard the good news about our lord and savior Enagic?

The pitch is, on its face, simple. The evangelists tan and glowing. But under the cheerful, girlboss-ified reels, and the inspirational conferences, and the coaching sessions, and the odd water machines themselves, there’s something murkier bubbling under the surface.

For the past nearly 10 years, East End wellness-space “entrepreneurs” have been spreading the gospel of Enagic, a Japanese-founded company selling $5,000 (on average — some come out to more like $6,500) water ionizers that filter tap water and change its pH, creating five different “types” of water at varying levels of acidity. There’s one that should be used for stain removal, one for preparing baby food, one for personal hygiene, one for commercial cleaning. The most popular is called “Kangen” — “return to origin” in Japanese — an alkaline water that the company advertises as “perfect for drinking.”

Without getting too far into it, alkaline water, or water with a slightly higher pH, probably won’t change your life. It cannot treat cancer, despite some Reddit rumors, and while drinking water is definitely good for you, the Mayo Clinic maintains that “[f]or most people, alkaline water is not better than plain water.” It could offer minor symptom relief for those suffering from acid reflux, but, beyond that, scientists have not found evidence that alkaline water is more healthful than safe tap or regular bottled water.

TL/DR: Your body regulates its pH naturally, and your stomach acid basically nukes whatever you drink immediately anyway.

The interesting thing about Enagic is its business model. The company is a member of the Direct Selling Association, a trade association that includes businesses with multilevel marketing compensation plans (M.L.M.s). Think: Avon, Pampered Chef, Herbalife, Amway, Scentsy, LuLaRoe. These businesses do create and sell productsBut, critics say, many function more like pyramid schemes, with recruitment driving the majority of sales and business.

Enagic has a truly byzantine explanation of how its system works — a lot of it is based on “rank” — but it basically functions like this: You buy a filtration machine from Enagic for thousands of dollars. Now that you own one, you can register as a distributor and sell more machines to new buyers, who can then become distributors themselves. If you recruit someone in this fashion, they become part of your “downline” and you share in their success. Since you have just invested thousands to get your business off the ground, you want to gather as many recruits as possible in order to recoup your losses. And you want those downlines to spread the gospel, because you get a piece of the action. You and your downlines, who want downlines of their own, end up proselytizing the benefits of the product and business model so extensively that you begin selling a religion. The filter won’t just make your tap water taste better, it will hydrate at a cellular level; it will cleanse your blood. The business won’t just make you money, it will elevate your consciousness.   

In 2021, The Atlantic reported on Amelia Whelan, an Enagic distributor and founder of the “Breakaway Movement” who amassed a large following. Whelan is from Montauk and now splits her time among Bali, Hawaii, and Australia. According to her Instagram, she has tens of thousands of distributors in her downline. Whelan brought in her friend Lacey Bahns (née Daunt), originally from Montauk, who has become an M.L.M. success story in her own right. She and her family decamped to Austin, Texas, during the pandemic, in part because of New York State vaccine policies. (She still owns a home here.) There’s also Jess Bellofatto: a yoga teacher, former studio owner, and wellness entrepreneur who lives in East Hampton and, part of the year, in Florida. According to Bellofatto’s Instagram, she got into Kangen water after burnout from the strain of running various wellness businesses: yoga teaching, stand-up paddleboard yoga, retreats, etc.

These three women cover a range of modern influencerhood, but all tap into a similar spiritual impulse. Whelan leans more New Age, with surf vids from Bali and a focus on manifestation. Bahns has made a bit of a hard pivot into Christianity and now describes herself as a “ Jesus lovin’ wife + mom of 2 girls, soon 4” on Insta. She is vaccine skeptical. Bellofatto, likewise, is a member of the organic-mom-turned-anti-vax camp (one post of hers alleges Covid was a social experiment, you get the vibe), but with a strong dose of blissed-out yoga earth-mother energy.

What they also have in common is a relentless insistence that you, too, can live like them, if you follow the gospel. If you really want it, you could have their lifestyle: endless beach days, more time with your kids, bikini-fit and flying around the world.

If you spend enough time on the Kangen influencers’ social-media pages and websites, doubt about your own path in life may start to creep in. They’re posting screenshots of six-figure bank statements, promising that this is really working not just for them but for all these people they’ve gotten to join. Here they are riding a bicycle in paradise; there they are laughing uproariously in a group snapshot from an Enagic retreat. Maybe all it really does take is daring and dedication? Maybe my life’s not quite working because I’m not working hard enough . . . or not believing hard enough?

But head over to Enagic USA’s website, and peruse their handy-dandy earnings disclosure statement from May 2025. Ah, yes. For about 50 percent of distributors, the median income from Enagic came out to under $500. Not including, of course, expenses incurred — you’re on the hook for those, and even Enagic will acknowledge that they “can be significant.” It’s not farfetched to calculate that most people lose money from their time with Enagic.

There are a few who certainly are getting rich. The lucky “6A2-6” rank (and above) sitting at the top of the pyramid earned a median of $1,462,729. But that was 11 people, just .03 percent of total distributors. Only 196 distributors earned more in a year than an American worker’s average salary, out of more than 35,000 distributors. Which is fine, if you’re just trying to earn some extra pocket money, as Enagic claims most of their distributors are. But not if you just maxed out your credit card on a magic water doodad because some lady in Baja who doesn’t believe in sunscreen bullshitted you about manifesting abundance.