We’ve all seen the click-bait link online too many times. It brings up a video in which a woman pours Coke into her badly stained toilet, and declares that the process left the appliance sparkling clean. I’m here to tell you, that claim is pure BUNK!
Now-a-days, most folks use readily available liquid (pictured
above) or foaming-tablet toilet bowl cleaners…
Today’s tale is not about ‘food’, per sae. But it spotlights a common beverage in a surprising (to some) non-food application.
We have a downstairs toilet in our house that’s seldom used. It’s also seldom cleaned, and was all but forgotten during the COVID crisis. Now it suffers the indignity of virtually impregnable stains in the lowest extremity of its bowl…
Put to the test
So, just for a lark, Sister Erin brought home a 2 L bottle of Coke a few days ago to test the claim.
What could be easier? Just pour 500 ml of Original (sugar-sweetened) Coca Cola into the bowl, and let the acid and bubbles go to work…
The rationale
The rationale behind the claim that Coke will scour your toilet is simple. And it seems, on the surface, to be supported by longstanding evidence.
If you’re old enough, you’ll remember the claims a few decades ago that Coke would removed rust from tools and car parts. It even made the big do-it-yourself magazines of the day, such as Mechanics Illustrated and Popular Mechanics.
And I can attest, from personal experience – Dad cleaned a saw blade using the technique – that Coke worked in that application.
‘Experts’ opined as the acids in coke were chiefly responsible for eating away the corrosion. And the bubbles helped by keeping the soaking bath churning.
Those acids, by the way, have been demonstrated to be powerful erosive agents. A famous dental-sphere experiment showed how a tooth was effected over time. The results were conclusive.
However, “The idea that [Cola] can destroy teeth literally overnight appears to be an urban myth,” BBC Science Focus confirms. “[The myth’s] origins [are] in misquoted statements made by a Cornell University professor in 1950.”
Scientific Method
In the grand old tradition of the Scientific Method, Erin and I set out to replicate the toilet-scouring results claimed for Coke in the ubiquitous video.
We poured 500 ml, measured in a kitchen measuring cup, into the bowl, directly targeting the demon stain. And left it for an hour. This was actually a generous allowance in favour of the claim. The video apparently shows the technique acting instantly.
And nothing happened.
We repeated the experiment allowing 2 hours for the magic reaction to take place. Nothing happened. Then we repeated the procedure giving the stuff 4 hours to do its thing. And then 8 hours. And, still, nothing happened.
The takeaway
Cleaning your toilet with Coke is just another fanciful, though enthralling, Internet hoax. The perpetrators just want to lure you into their claws so they can bombard you with an avalanche of ads.
But there’s more…
Relating the experience to others, folks of my era recalled how granular, foaming toilet cleaners used to work on ANY kind of stain. Even those that resisted scrubbing with a brush.
It turns out those preparations – which have long since been removed from the market because they dissolve plastic drain pipes – were not only strong detergents. They also employed chemicals which foamed violently when they came in contact with water. And the chemical reaction also generated heat, which had to have helped banish stains.
My take
I had my doubts, from the outset, that Cola would clean my ‘problem’ toilet. So I was neither particularly disappointed nor ticked off by the dismal result of the experiment.
But after some cogitation and consultation, I’ve decided to try another food-related toilet scouring method. This time, I’m going to dump some baking soda into the bowl, let it sink to the bottom where the stain resides, and then gently pour some plain white vinegar on top of it. According to Good Housekeeping, that should create a violent foaming reaction of its own. And the acidic nature of the vinegar may actually assist in dissolving the Stain From Hell…
I’ll let you know what happens!
~ Maggie J.