Facts Healthy Eating

Don't Rinse Your Dishes Before Putting Them In The Dishwasher

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Taylor Rock|

After you get done chowing down on a nice home-cooked meal, you discard any scraps in the garbage, head to the sink to pre-rinse any extra gunk off your plate, then put it in the dishwasher, right? Wrong! Shockingly, you're supposed to leave food particles completely intact if you want your dishes truly squeaky clean.

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Cascade recommends skipping the pre-rinse altogether if you're using Cascade Platinum detergent pods, even if you have burnt cheese or other heavy duty messes on your plate. But obviously, throw out the big boy pieces. OK, but why? Enzymes in the detergent are made to attach themselves to food particles, but without them they have nothing to hold onto, The Wall Street Journal reports. Even with the new revelation, people aren't on board with the method.

"NO YOU ALWAYS PRE-RINSE AND THIS IS A HILL I WILL DIE ON," @seungminkim said.

"This is a scam put out by the dishwasher company, which wants you to break your dishwasher and buy a new one," @Fahrenthold replied.

"Are you trying to take away my dog's purpose in life? She is an excellent pre-washer," @rachel_x_graves said.

"My dad (an ex appliance serviceman) always said, 'it's a dishwasher not a waste disposal,'" @Bandit said.

@Lee_in_Iowa came in like a wrecking ball with this piece of advice: "This is the wrong argument to have. It depends entirely on the model of dishwasher you own. 20 years ago, yes, you needed to scrape and even pre-rinse the dishes. Now, my dishwasher does a pre-rinse — & the draining water goes thru the garbage disposal. So. Read. The. Manual."

Then there were anti-rinse truthers like @JuliannAndreen, who said, "Daughter nearly had to tie me down as I watched in horror while she loaded crusty, dirty dishes into my dishwasher. She promised if they didn't come out clean, she'd rinse & reload. They were spotless. It still goes against my nature, but I don't pre-rinse anymore."

Truthfully, we don't know what to believe because we've certainly all put something in the wash with food on it — ehem, looking at you peanut butter — that has come out in its same exact nasty form, only solidified. So you do you and pre-rinse — or don't. A little crusty peanut butter never hurt anybody. Cleanliness goes way beyond plates, cups, forks and knives though. As a matter of fact, you've probably never thought about cleaning these 15 things — but you certainly should.

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