Mostly everyone has heard of the famous “five second rule”, wherein, if a piece of food falls on the floor and you pick it up within 5 seconds it is still good to eat. I’ve used this “rule” pretty much throughout my whole life along with a lot of other people, about 70% of women and 56% of men according to Jillian Clarke’s survey, and we deserve to know if this “rule” is indeed true.
Jillian Clarke went on to study whether or not the “five second rule” was true or not, a study which earned her an Ig Nobel Prize at Harvard University in 2004. In this study Clarke sterilized tile plates and then loaded them with E. coli. After this she placed cookies on the tiles for five seconds. The results are not what i wanted to hear but i can’t say i didn’t expect it. In all of the trials that she did the cookies picked up the E. coli within the five seconds. All of the followers of this sacred “rule”, myself included, have been living a lie our whole lives.
So if the “five second rule” isn’t true, how long does it actually take for food to be infected after falling on the floor? Well the answer, explained by Michael from Vsauce, is immediately. He says another study found that bacteria will stick to the dropped food immediately. But this doesn’t mean that the time spent on the floor doesn’t matter; a study found that after five seconds of the food being on the ground it picks around 150 to 8000 bacteria and if left longer than that, the number will only just increase. He goes on to explain that for some strains of salmonella it only takes 10 bacteria to actually infect you. This means the Five second rule is definitely false.
This is a very interesting article. Personally, I have always doubted the five second rule. I have always believed that either the food would be contaminated immediately, or after a time period longer than 5 seconds. This doesn’t mean that I do not still use the 5 second rule as an excuse to eat something that I have recently dropped. A study done by the New York Times says that, yes, food picked up before five seconds is less likely to be contaminated than food picked up after five seconds, but it does not mean that it is 100% safe to eat foods picked up in less than five seconds. This article is presented below.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/20/science/five-second-rule.html?_r=0
I am in agreement that the “5 second rule” is false, but how harmful can it be to eat a piece of food that was not even on the ground for 5 seconds. I am curious to know if you can truly get sick from following the rule. More info about the bacterio that infests the food can be found here https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-carrots-improve-your-vision/.