Garbage Disposal Food to Avoid | 7 Harmful Gunk for Disposal

Recently, I sent my clogged garbage disposal for maintenance. It suffers nothing but my ignorance of stuffing inside Garbage Disposal Food to Avoid. The first-time experience makes me conscious about taking care of the disposal for the better. You must know how far I have damaged my disposal unit.

Should all food go down the garbage disposal? No, there are several food items you cannot dump in the garbage disposal. These are starch-containing, fibrous, hard-to-cut food items that cause irreparable damage to the machine. Also, avoid putting in larger food chunks, for they take longer to grind, and the unit has to work a lot.

In this article, I will mention what food items garbage disposal rejects and what it accepts wholeheartedly. Additionally, you will know the reasons behind such segregation and its impact on the garbage disposal.

What Foods Don’t Go in Garbage Disposal?

Learn from my mistakes and fingertip the garbage disposal food to avoid, to ensure its smooth running. Not every food has the same nutrients in them. Different food items react according to water which is necessary for food grinding. So, do you want to discover what foods are bad for garbage disposals?

1. Coffee Beans

Coffee beans are not the ones to garnish your garbage disposal with. The fine-looking grounds form a thick paste when dissolved in the water within the disposal chamber. Also, the paste does nothing but stick around the linings or pipes to cause hard-to-reach clogs.

The easy solution is to throw them in a trash bin or utilize them in home gardens to make the most out of them without costing damage to the garbage disposal.

2. Dry Expandable Edible

What you thought regarding the title is right and throwing them in the garbage disposal is never a good idea. Since you follow the standard rule of running water before and after the disposal running, you must know certain food items expand when they come into contact with water. 

• Rice
• Pasta 
• Bread
• Oats

3. Eggshells

Eggshells are nowhere in the precious grinding list of the garbage disposal. Stop residing the thoughts in minds that these eggshells efficiently sharpen the blades, resulting in a more powerful unit.

It is not true and harms your machine due to the presence of thin membranes. You must know eggshell membranes cause blockage by wrapping the impeller plates, and the disposal works hard to rotate.

4. Vegetable Peels

Minor vegetable peels leave horrifying impacts on garbage disposal. The delicate peels of bananas, onions, or potatoes aim to trap other food items by wedging the drains or trapping the blades.

While thin and wet onion peels block the way for other entries, potato peels produce starch which is the last thing you want to avoid facing heavy-duty clogging. Also, looking into the famous banana peels take considerable time to decompose and linger inside the garbage disposal chamber.

5. Hard-to-cut Food

Remember, your garbage disposal machine is inefficient in converting chunks of everything you dump inside it. One such example is hard-to-cut foods which can bounce while grinding and restrict the way disposal work or turns.

• Bones
• Nuts
• Seeds

You must provide these food items shelter in trash cans to avoid the chances of garbage disposal getting stuck with chicken bone or nuts jumping with incomplete food processing.

6. Fibrous Food

If garbage disposal cannot handle a one-piece entity, how can it deal with the strings you hand over? Think before you put fibrous foods containing fibers, strings, and whatnot. Resulting in detangling the internal components of the garbage disposal for an entire life.

Fibrous food items, such as asparagus, celery, husk, or pumpkin, increase the chances of entrapping grinding plates and restricting others from grinding and cutting. Avoid the tension and convert them into that recommended size; your machine won’t budge.

7. Grease and Fats

Fats, whether saturated or unsaturated, have importance in cooking, but considering them to dump in a garbage disposal is a whole lot of trouble. Grease, oils, and fats are the worst foods for garbage disposal, residing in the lines of the drains and solidifying. Moreover, you must not use these things to lubricate the machines’ internal components, for it makes them less sharp and ineffective.

What to Put Down a Garbage Disposal to Clean it?

It is decided that your garbage disposal, what about the cleaning agents capable of handling. You must know what to put in the garbage disposal for the smell to eliminate the cause of emitting foul smell and maintain your garbage disposal cleaner and fresher for every use.

A solution of baking soda and vinegar work wonders for cleaning the disposal. Additionally, it removes subsided particles when leaving one cup of vinegar and half cup of baking soda solution in it.

Moreover, follow my tip of putting citrus and lemon peels to vanish the smell and serve the dual purpose of cleaning and removing smells from the garbage disposal.

What Do You Put in the Garbage Disposal?

Although there are several food items you cannot stuff in the garbage disposal, you may have other alternatives to make disposal work with and convert them into finer particles. The list of food items you can put in the unit.

• liquids
• soup
• soft food
• salads
• chicken meat in small amounts
• vegetable/fruit scraps

Do you put water in a garbage disposal?

Whether you admit it or not, water is as necessary as garbage disposal running. Your disposal needs water; it slides the food down effortlessly and causes the grinding plates to work less while serving as the transferring agents to convert them into finer particles leading to the main drainpipe. You must run water before and after the food grinding.

Is it OK to put ice cubes in a garbage disposal?

Ice sharpens garbage disposal blades and prove fruitful in dislodging the sticking particles in the garbage disposal. You must practice running a handful of ice cubes in the machine to increase lifespan.

Summing Up

You must be aware of what should get inside the garbage disposal. Otherwise, the consequences will make you treat deliberate blockages and clogs. Also, frequent clogging treatment decreases the machine’s efficiency and longevity. So, feel free to get the most out of the article and ensure you memorize garbage disposal food to avoid.