The Brussels-based Monde Selection has bestowed a prestigious honour on tap water from a Japanese city notorious for a nuclear catastrophe.

According to the Japan Times, Fukushima's water won a Gold Quality Award. The second-place finish in the competition enables it to place a Monde Selection quality label on tap water from Fukushima. 

The city sells its own brand of bottled tap water, called Fukushima no Mizu (which translates as "Fukushima Water").

In March 2011, the nuclear power plant southeast of Fukushima suffered a meltdown following an earthquake and tsunami. Officials from the region insist that the water is free of cancer-causing radioactive fallout.

Meanwhile, Britain's Independent newspaper has reported that food from the Fukushima area may soon reach store shelves in that country because of loopholes in the regulatory system.

"The alarm is being sounded after Taiwanese investigators uncovered more than 100 radioactive food products which had been produced in Fukushima but falsely packaged to give their origin as Tokyo," the Independent noted.

There's a concerted effort in Japan to rehabilitate the reputation of agricultural products from Fukushima. It comes as Japan prepares to host the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

Last month, Prince William dined with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on food with ingredients from Fukushima during a visit to Japan.

And now, All Nippon Airways is carrying the area's products on all of its flights as part of a "Taste of Japan" campaign.

In March, three Berlin art directors created a fake product called Fukushima Water, complete with a fake website and fake advertisement, as part of an awareness campaign to draw attention to the contaminated water that has continued to leak into the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima nuclear reactors.

This fake product is different from the city's Fukushima no Mizu brand (pictured below).