You have just got home from a loooong day of school. You are absolutely starving and the first thing you do is run to the cabinet. When you open the door sitting there right in the middle of the shelf is the big box of cookies starring you in the face. You grab the box shove your hand in reach out for your mouth and….. accidentally drop the cookie on the floor. This is what I call the moment of panic. Normally, i rush down to the floor and grab the cookie right before I count to 5 seconds.
Everyone knows the 5 second rule but have we ever really put a lot of thought into it. Do we really know what has touched the floor that our food has just fell onto? Probably not.
According to an article entitled “Does the five second rule really work” featured on howstuffworks.com, Former high School Student Jillian Clarke during her internship at the University of Illinois in 2003 disproved the 5 second rule. By conducting an experiment in which she coated tiles with E.coli and purposely dropped food such as cookie and gummy bears onto the floor. She found that after 5 seconds, the food was not clean and was in fact, coated with bacteria. Another study shows that “A study from the Hygiene Council (sponsored by the company that makes Lysol) found that kitchen floor just in front of the sink has more bacteria (830 per square inch) than the trash can (411 per square inch). In the article “5 Second Rule: is it ever okay to eat off the floor?” featured on the official website of the Huffington Post, food that fell on the floor for 5 seconds is able to collect anywhere from 150 to 8000 different types of bacteria.
So, next time you fro a cookie on the floor, even if it is the very last one in the box, throw it away. The 5 second rule is a lot less reliable than it seems!
Sources:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/five-second-rule2.htm
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/12/10/5-second-rule_n_2272288.html
So does this mean the chocolate chip cookie I dropped on the floor/just ate was filled with bacteria? Great! This topic is so interesting because it is used by so many people- who actually believe it! How many times a day to we drop something on the ground and a friend snickers “5 seconds rule”. And sadly, we all shake it off and eat it anyway. It’s so typical. Just like the five second rule, people believe all other superstitions. I, for one, should not talk because I am a firm believer of things like it’s good luck if a bird poops on you. Now that you have me thinking about superstitions like the 5 second rule, I decided to look up a few. Take a look at a few we all can relate to! http://www.csicop.org/superstition/library/common_superstitions/
This is a great post to debunk a myth because so many people abide by the five second rule no matter what the food or the surface it falls on. Regardless of what kind of bacteria or how much bacteria is on a surface if you eat a piece of food off of a surface that hasn’t been sanitized in the last few minutes there will be some type of substance on it. The bacteria might not be deadly or unhealthy but why chose to eat a cookie that fell on your heavily trafficked kitchen floor than just reach in the box and get other one? However the amount of bacteria that the food picks up depends on the type of service as discussed in this article
I agree and disagree with your post. Yes bacteria can easily get on food if it is dropped on the floor. But there are many other factors to play into whether or not it is still safe to eat. For example, how clean is the floor? What kind of bacteria is found on the floor? What kind of floor is it? If you drop something outside, yes there is probably more bacteria likely to get on your food. If you drop something on a carpet, it is most likely to still be safe to eat, as long as the carpet isn’t a nasty dust rag. Also, stickier food is more likely to pick up bacteria than solid food. The longer you let the food stay on the floor, the more bacteria it will collect, so if you really want to save your food, better pick it up super fast. However, if you ever aren’t sure and don’t want to risk it, just throw it out. I think we should just take the information in your post and keep it in mind. But I know many people who follow the five second rule and are still completely healthy, myself included. I think you just have to be wary of the conditions of the situation.
Clarke is completely right. I never use the five second rule weather it is in the comfort of my own home or not. Bacteria is completely invisible to the naked eye and just because we don’t see dirt or dust, doesn’t mean that the floor is clean. I’m sure you’re not going to get sick or anything serious decease from doing that, but I definitely don’t like thinking about whats touched the floor, that has now touched my afternoon snack. I know in my house, my brother walks around in his bare feet, so that alone is enough of a reason for me to throw the food away. Same thing goes if you have pets. Maybe that’s the germaphobe in me, but eating something off the floor is definitely not sanitary.
I like this post because a lot of people either really believe this rule to be true or follow the rule to mortify the reasoning behind eating food that has dropped on the floor. I decided to comment on this post because I have some prior knowledge of the topic from watching g the TV show “Brain Games.” However, I cannot remember the exact episode where they covered the topic. From my knowledge I agree with your post that dropped food gathers bacteria; in fact the more time food spends on the floor, the more bacteria it collects. However, disagree with your post because in some circumstances food is still good to eat. For instance, solid foods gather less bacteria so I believe a cookie would be good too eat. Also, you have to take in consideration what kind of bacteria is present on the floor; thus, the experiment that you mentioned was extreme with the bacteria that it contained. With that being said the type of floor is important as well because generally carpet floors hold less bacteria than tile floors. Therefore, if a cookie drops on the floor it may be beneficial to your stomach to pick it up even if your mind is telling you otherwise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2ETAOlPRLk
I hate to see the 5 second rule disproved because I always used it. Why waste a good piece of food if its apparently still safe to eat? So seeing this definitely sucks because I’ve followed the 5 second rule my whole life. I did see a news report on ABC News years ago where they did a similar experiment and surprisingly they did not find bacteria growth on the food until after it had been there for 45 seconds. I would have thought this would prove yours wrong but it definitely all depends on what how clean the surface is that the food is being dropped on, as well as the types of bacteria that are lying on that surface. Some bacterias definitely grow faster than others so that’d definitely be a considered variable.