You wouldn’t wipe up the surface where your toddler strews her food before eating it with a gross, germy dishcloth, would you? That’s the message of a new commercial from Bounty for their DuraTowel, a paper towel that they claim is tough enough to perform dishcloth-like tasks, yet disposable enough to guarantee a continuing revenue stream. How accurate are these claims?

We know where to go for the answers to questions like this: our hard-working, hard-testing cousins over at Consumer Reports and ShopSmart. They’re equipped to test paper towels, which they do by soaking them, pulling them apart, and rubbing them over sandpaper, treating each towel identically.

The result was that yeah, you don’t spread as many bacteria or food particles with the DuraTowel as with a dishcloth, but that’s the case with any paper towel. Or a tissue. Or a brand-new dishcloth.

The DuraTowel held up better than other towels, but not as well as Scott’s Shop Towels, which might be what you want when scrubbing encrusted tomato sauce off a plastic high chair. You can find those in hardware/home and office supply stores.

Does the Bounty DuraTowel live up to its claims? [ShopSmart]

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