Actually, I’m not sure. That might have actually been brand name styrofoam.
Anyway, after having discovered this, I decided that I must do an experiment. So, I scrounged up some styrofoam (or plastic foam, whatever) put it in a dish, and then put lemon juice over it. Nothing dissolved. Even after a couple of hours, nothing seems to have happened. The bottle of lemon juice says “100% juice”. Presumably that means it’s not watered down. Did I do something incorrectly? Was the great Cecil wrong?
Since this is a comment on one of Cecil’s columns and not one of the Staff Reports written by fools like me, I’ll move this thread to the appropriate forum.
Cecil wrong, you say? Go suck a lemon. Then squeeze the leftover peel over your cup.
Note that Cecil says the responsible agent in lemons is in the lemon oil. Lemon oil is the stuff that squirts from the pores on the outside of the peel when you squeeze it. Bottled lemon juice wouldn’t have any lemon oil in it. Try your experiment again, this time squeezing a fresh lemon peel over your plastic foam, or use bottled lemon oil or bottled pure lemon extract which contains a modest proportion of lemon oil. I just tried it with lemon extract. It took about five minutes for the pitting to become apparent.
Whoops, sorry about putting this in the wrong forum.
I tried it again using the peel. It worked this time.
Long live Cecil!
Oranges work, too, but I’ve never tried lemon, so I can’t compare their effectiveness.
And just for the sake of completeness, brand-name styrofoam is never used for and would not be suitable for food packaging or disposable dishes. It’s exclusively in-wall insulation. Styrofoam may be the only brand name which is used as a generic term for something it isn’t even an example of.