On TikTok, a cleaning trick that will sound familiar to many has gone viral. It consists of placing a ball of aluminum foil in the dishwasher basket in order to polish the cutlery, but the truth is that this method does not work, the Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU) has warned on its website.
Aluminum foil can be useful for cleaning silver, which darkens when exposed to air. For this reason, before it was customary to submerge it in a container with hot water and baking soda together with the cutlery. “Aluminum attracts sulfur from silver sulfide to form aluminum sulfide, with which the silver is shiny and what darkens is the aluminum foil,” they clarify from the organization.
But this trick has been transformed over the years, to the point that stainless steel cutlery and the dishwasher have entered the equation. “The result is information that is not true, it is a hoax,” says the OCU.
Stainless steel doesn’t corrode, so there’s no point in putting aluminum foil in the dishwasher to make them shine. On the contrary, if iron oxide appears on stainless steel cutlery, we can remove it using a scouring pad and rubbing a little, experts say.
For scratches, aluminum is not good for us either. “If they are very superficial, just rub them with the green scourer itself and some oil. If they need a bit more polish, you will find specific products on the market or you can resort to the famous white cleaning stone,” they conclude.
