Thursday, November 13, 2008
Whether it’s one of your favorite chips or that cookie you’d been eyeing all day, you’ve probably dropped food on the ground, picked it up and scarfed it down citing the five-second rule. For some it’s the two- or three-second rule, but whether that cookie touches the floor for one second or for 15 minutes, the effect is still the same.
Anne Maczulak, microbiologist and author of The Five-Second Rule and Other Myths About Germs, says the five-second rule is totally untrue. Once food has touched the floor, the damage is done. Bacteria attaches to it immediately. A piece of food that touches the ground for only half a second will pick up bacteria and other germs.
Not all surfaces have the same number of bacteria, Maczulak says. Knowing your environment and using common sense will tell you whether it’s okay to use the five-second—or any second—rule. If you live by yourself and clean regularly, it’s probably okay to eat something off the kitchen floor. But if you drop a brownie on the bus, it doesn’t take a genius to know you shouldn’t put it in your mouth. Maczulak says exposed surfaces that are touched repeatedly, such as any public floor, carry a higher number of germs and bacteria.
Even if you do eat that brownie off the bus floor, the chances of getting sick are still slim. Maczulak says that in order to get sick, you would have to be exposed to a high dose of pathogens—bacteria that cause illness—and dropping food on the floor for a few seconds won’t deliver that. In fact, it could even be good for you. Exposing your immune system to small doses of germs can help make it stronger, Maczulak says.
So, if you’re daring, go ahead and eat that bite that escaped. It’s not so bad.
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Comments
That's disgusting: the five-second rule
Well, I'm not going to eat peanut buttered bread that's hit the floor peanut butter first, no matter how clean I think the floor probably is. But a piece of hard candy or something frozen that I'm about to cook, unless I suspect there to be animal urine on the floor, is going to get eaten.
That said, I suspect that there is animal urine on the floor of the buses.
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