A woman from San Francisco says she spent weeks feeling sick and confused before she finally figured out that her dishwasher pods may have been the cause. She shared the experience in a TikTok video that has since gained widespread attention online.
The video was posted by Amy Soup, who goes by @amy.sou on TikTok. It has received over 976,100 views, more than 70,200 likes, and nearly 3,400 comments.
In the video, Amy said that a few months ago, every meal she cooked began to smell and taste like “chemicals or perfume or soap.” She initially thought it was a new hand soap she had bought, believing the scent was transferring from her hands to her food.
Amy’s repeated attempts to fix the problem failed until she checked the product reviews on Costco’s website
As the problem kept happening, Amy said she started throwing away every meal she cooked because the chemical taste was too strong to eat. She then said she began experiencing physical symptoms, stating, “my stomach started hurting. Every time I would eat, I would get nauseous afterwards.”
@amy.soup Not sure how this product is still on the market! I was just so relieved to finally figure out what it was! #fyp #storytime #costco
♬ original sound – Amy Soup
Amy said she noticed the smell was also coming from inside cabinets where she stored her cups, pots, and pans, but that other people she asked said they could not smell anything. She described feeling completely lost, saying, “I felt like I was f–king losing my mind.”
Desperate to fix the problem, Amy said she tried soaking her dishes in vinegar, baking soda, and Dawn dish soap, and washing everything by hand. None of it worked, she said. She described the experience as being “like a f–king horror movie” because the smell and taste were on everything, no matter what she did.
Another woman had a similarly unsettling discovery after finding something inside her Starbucks can that put her off canned drinks entirely. The turning point, Amy said in her TikTok video, came when she checked the Costco website where she had purchased her dishwasher pods.
She said she found “dozens of reviews of people complaining about the same thing.” Amy said she cannot claim with “100% certainty” that the pods caused her stomach problems, but noted that her symptoms started right after she began using them and went away once she stopped.
Amy said in her video that reviewers also reported being unable to get the smell and taste off their dishes, with some saying they had to throw all their dishware away. She said she resorted to using paper plates and plastic utensils for a long period of time.
Eventually, after a lot of research, she said she had to take her dishwasher apart, wipe everything down, and use citric acid powder to finally remove the residue. “It wasn’t just as simple as switching my dish detergent,” she said. “It was even doing that, everything still tasted and smelled like it.”
At the end of the video, Amy expressed relief at finally finding an explanation, saying she “was just so relieved when I read the reviews to finally have a f–king answer because I felt like I was going crazy.” She also questioned why the product is still being sold, saying, “how the f–k are y’all still selling these?”
When a viewer in the comments pointed out that the video did not show which product it was, Amy replied with a photo showing the product to be Finish Powerball Quantum dishwasher pods, a 100-tab pack sold in two packs of 50, marketed as providing six months of washes.
The comments section of Amy’s video showed that many viewers said they had experienced something similar. One commenter wrote, “THIS HAPPENED TO ME!!!!!!! With cascade pods!! I was sick for months and my stomach was a mess!!! I literally only noticed once we ran out of pods and hand washed for a few days.”
Another viewer offered a possible explanation, writing, “Most of ‘food poisoning’ from restaurants are actually from detergent residue on the dishware. It’ll upset a stomach really quickly.” Others suggested practical fixes, with one writing, “set your washers in extra rinse cycle,” and another saying, “Maybe your dishwasher isn’t rinsing properly!”
One commenter appeared unsurprised by the situation, writing, “don’t worry, our government won’t do a thing to help us,” while another simply said, “this is why i only wash dishes by hand.” It is not the first time someone has bought a Costco product and scrambled after reading the comments.
Finish and its parent company Reckitt have not publicly commented on the matter.
