The 5-Second Rule Investigated

j-beda writes "Here is an interesting report on a student project about the 5-second rule: ' If You Drop It, Should You Eat It? Scientists Weigh In on the 5-Second Rule.' 'According to Clarke, a senior at the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, the 5-second rule dates back to the time of Genghis Khan, who first determined how long it was safe for food to remain on a floor when dropped there. Khan had slightly lower standards, however; he specified 12 hours, more or less.' How long can you safely leave dropped food on the floor before picking it up to eat? You know you've always wanted to have the definitive answer ..."

Comments

First...

[Anonymous Coward]

5-second post.

Findings don't just apply to floors

[tessaiga]

Among Clarke's findings:

--Cookies and candy are much more likely to be picked up and eaten than cauliflower or broccoli.

I find the same thing applies to cookies and candies on plates too.

Depends on the floor

[Bishop923]

I don't really follow the five second rule as much as I follow the "Would I want to eat off this surface at -any- time." rule. Something falls on the otherwise clean kitchen floor, I'll probably pick it up and eat it. Something falls on the utility room floor near the litter box... I'll probably shit-can it.

Simple and apparently effective, at least I can't verify that I have gotten sick from it yet.

Re:Depends on the floor

[A55M0NKEY]

I totally agree. There MIGHT be some deadly germ anywhere, but probably not unless you are in a particularly dirty area where there is lots of food for bacteria. I eat wild plants like strawberrys without washing them, I'd eat a sandwich that fell on the lawn, or on a rock outside unless there was sand around. ( I hate eating sand... )

As for the 5 second rule, who cares, once it falls on the surface, it's contaminated. But EVERYTHING in life is contaminated with something. Do I think I'll get sick from it? Depends on the surface...

I've eaten cold pizza from a box on my counter 36 or more hours since buying it. The same beer that makes one forget to refrigerate their pizza tends to kill anything that may have grown on it in the meantime if drunk at the same time the leftovers are consumed. I'm fairly confident that floor microbes are suceptible to beer sterilization as well.

Dog slobber is harmless too, unless you just caught them eating out of the cat box and can smell it on their breath. Potato chips are fine after the dog sniffed them but turned up his nose. Dog tongues are useful wound cleansers and scab abraiders too. Skin you knee? It'll heal twice as fast and with less scarring if you let your dog lick off the scab every day or every other day.

Brie that has been sitting in the window sill for days and is growing white fur is an unknown. I ate some of that assuming the white fur was just more of the 'crust' and did get mildly sick, though it may have been from other causes.

I've heard that green bread is OK to eat. Have accidentally eaten moldy bread. It tasted so gross I almost puked on the spot. No ill affects afterward though.

Olives, black and green, as well as pickles are good to eat when sitting out for days in a bowl if there is liquid in the bowl. Olives, are good even if there is no liquid as they shrivel and dry to chewy raisin like things. Dried pickles sound too gross to try.

Cheetos. I never eat cheeze puffs until they are good and stale. MMMMMM chewy like real cheeze instead of all crunchy and gross..

I use the five hair rule

[karmavore]

I have a dog, four cats a wife two daughters and a niece. If it comes off the ground with more than 5 hairs or if a hair is more than 5 inches it's no good.

Only One Suprise, Guess At The 12 Hour Rule

[MBCook]

Women are more likely than men to eat food that's been on the floor

That's the one that really suprises me. The rest make sense in some way. This is the only one that I was suprised at. I would expect men would be more likely, equal at worst.

As for the 12 hour rule, gross! Of course, they didn't know about bacteria or microbes, or such so I guess as far as they saw, there was no reason not to eat the food off then floor unless the floor was quite visibly dirty or some such. The 12 hour part probably has more to do with the food being found by ants and flies than anything else.

Re:Only One Suprise, Guess At The 12 Hour Rule

[skwirlmaster]

Perhaps a "average" woman's floor is clearner than the average man's. The before mentioned would-I-eat-off-this-floor rule comes into play.
My experience (at least in high school and college) that my buddies floors were quite unsanitariy.

Re:Only One Suprise, Guess At The 12 Hour Rule

[Darth_Burrito]

Women are more likely than men to eat food that's been on the floor

That mildly shocked me as well. I wonder what the margin was and how they arrived at these conclusions. It's pretty easy to imagine an 18 year old high school senior named Jillian adversly affecting the results of her experiements if they were conducted improperly. What I mean is, there's a lot of guys out there that wouldn't eat off any floor in front of a young attractive girl, especially when their behavior was the subject of said study.

Then again, it might make sense in that men are generally less familiar with the preparation of food than women generally are. Men might simply be more naive with respect to what happens to food before they eat it, and therefore afford it a higher level of purity than it actually has. Also, of the men and women I know, men are more likely to purchase prepackaged foods like tv dinners or the ever glorious hot pockets. There is a certain notion of sterility in a plastic wrapped entree that contact with the floor negates.

5 seconds? Disgusting

[Dancin_Santa]

Everyone knows it's the 3-second rule.

Mmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

...floor pie.

Nasty....

[reaper20]

I worked as a line cook for 3 years during high school and another 4 while I attended college. I have _never_ met a cook that abided by this rule.

You might want to, as much as we all now want to go BOFH on every person we know, but in the end, our family and friends eat there, and what's the extra 5 minutes?

One thing I've learned from doing both tech and "hard labor" while I was younger is: professionalism is professionalism. That cook doesn't want you eating that nasty steak more than a professional programmer wants his unfinished project to be released early.

Re:Nasty....

[Henry V .009]

Where the hell did you work? The more usual experience is that when the big slab of meat falls to the ground, it's fine once the crushed roaches get scraped off.

Re:Nasty....

[sporktoast]

Where the hell did you work?
My experience was that when a slab of meat hit the floor, the call went out on the line to hold it for the next shmoe who asked for his steak to be well done.

I am a vegetarian these days.

Re:Nasty....

[linzeal]

This is too true. We did the same thing for pizza that did not hit the floor, we had a sexy sounding girl convince drunk college students that they wanted whatever was ordered and could not be delivered or paid for.

Student life

[E_elven]

I'd be happy to eat off the floor, if I had a floor or food, you insensitive clod!

More importantly,

[schmaltz]

If somebody else is there and witnesses the food item's descent and impact, does that affect your decisionmaking, regardless of 5 seconds or 12 hours?

Not the floor

[Alethes]

It depends on much more important factors than the cleanliness of the floor:

1) How hungry I am
2) How good the food is
3) How able I am to replace the food I dropped

Health be damned!

Re:Not the floor

[nomel]

For me, the stickyness of the food plays a big role also. If it's something like an M&M, chances are I'm going to eat it even after several minutes. If it's sweet and sour pork...that's a different matter.

Deep Fry It

[Samus]

In some resturaunts if it falls on the floor it just gets deep fried for a few seconds. I think you can deep fry just about anything...

Re:Deep Fry It

[richie2000]

In some resturaunts if it falls on the floor it just gets deep fried for a few seconds. I think you can deep fry just about anything...

I just want to know how they get the floor to fit in the fryer.

Re:um, yuck

[pauljlucas]

Do you know how many bacteria, yeast, and fungus are on the floor? Your really eating foot-fungus when you eat something that just fell on the floor.

Do you know how many bacteria, yeast, and fungus, not to mention dried snot from people wiping their noses, are on handrails, doornobs, and kitchen counters? You're really just eating everything that hands have touched (unless you are religious about washing your hands before eating, and not touching anything else while eating).

Lousy Experiment

[Red Pointy Tail]

Taking samples of 1 square inch and monitoring it for microbes and spores? What a lousy experiment.

What they should do is to hire 500 students to continually drop food and candy on the floor, pick it up again for consumption, and then monitor their well-being over the course of many weeks. Those wimps ;)

Re:um, yuck

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

That would explain this case of athlete's stomach...

Re:um, yuck

[vericgar]

Actually, if you had read the article, they were surprised at how little of that stuff really was on the floor....

Re:I use the five hair rule

[Anonymous Coward]

Double Tard.
You had to be crude, but then you couldn't even do it right.

He's bragging that he's surrounded by all that pussy.

That way you include the cats.

bacteria

[schnits0r]

People think this whole bacteria on the floor tihng is disgusting. We have stomach acid, and various immune devices in our bodies. I'm not worried about properly cooked food hitting the ground. IT gives my immune system a work out. It's eat something that fell out of my hands at a sidewalk cafe in Bangeledesh!

Re:bacteria

[core plexus]

I think it's sometimes overblown, but I grew up on a farm. Sometimes after turning over cow patties looking for bugs, I'd find a carrot or pick some berries or something and eat it. If I had bothered to wash my hands, it was in the same pond the cows and other animals drank from and pissed in. I'm betting not only did it 'cure' me of the croup, but it also made me resistant later on.

On the other hand, now if food hits the floor, or even the counter sometimes, I just let the dogs have it, unless it's something that can be washed and recooked real quick.

-cp-

Re:bacteria

[RobertB-DC]

I think it's sometimes overblown, but I grew up on a farm. Sometimes after turning over cow patties looking for bugs, I'd find a carrot or pick some berries or something and eat it.

How nice! The fresh fruit and berries must have gone well with your bugs.

obDisclaimer: I live in the country now, and the kids and I love finding interesting and unusual bugs.

Re:Is Big Brother watching?

[MattCohn.com]

I abide by the 10 minute rule. Not as long as 12 hours, but if something hits the floor it's going to be as dirty in 5 seconds as it will be in 10 minutes.

Especially in Chem Lab

[luekj]

I mean, five seconds in Hydrochloric acid. That will just make it even cleaner, right?

Or at least take some of the load off my poor stomach.....

so how long does it take?

[Mr.Coffee]

I , for one, am outraged! the article stated that the E.coli bacteria transferred to the gummy bears in 5 seconds, but they didn't do any testing to see what the minimal time for safety was. how am i supposed to know how long that cookie is still good for?

fourty-one fourty

[annisette]

At or below 40 degrees F and at or above 140 degrees F is considered to be the safe zone for storing or serving food items, safe from creating a growth medium for germs and bacteria. the inbetween temps F is the danger zone for growth of said critters. This is the standard for food safty in the hospitality industry. So go figure, what was the temp of the food dropped and the temp of what it was dropped on. but then only 5 seconds, well, more or less absolute rejection would be if it was dropped on the beach.

I'm stickin with it

[Stubtify]

if you have e. coli on your floors the 5 second rule is the least of your worries.

Re:I'm stickin with it

[GusCubed]

You have e.coli in your intestines, are you going to worry about that too?

Escherisha Coli is considered part of normal gut flora (Coli - refers to where it was first 'discovered' - the human colon). Some variants of e.coli are harmful though - but these are normally outcompeted by the usually benign resident population of e.coli.

If you don't have a resident population of e.coli - you in trouble.

Re:I'm stickin with it

[Zillatron]

You have e.coli in your intestines, are you going to worry about that too?

O.K. you got me there. I promise if I drop a cookie into my intestine, I won't be putting it back into my mouth.

No matter what

5 second rule?

[Kowh]

The five second rule is stricted enforced around here. In fact, usually we don't even get all five seconds. Any dropped food instantly becomes property of the canine clean-up service, and they don't take kindly to "take-backs".

Or rather they do, but they look at you with puppy dog eyes and you're forced to drop the food again.

Depends on where you stand

[tsa]

If you stand in the middle of a busy highway then 5 seconds might be way too long.

Not true about Genghis Khan

[mnmn]

As a direct descendent, I second that claim about Genghis Khan's rule. It is really 0 seconds here. My grandmother (born in the 1920s) and other elders in the tribal areas never advise eating anything that has been dropped on the ground. An exception is where you can slice off the section of the food that has touched the ground or peel it off.

In Hazarajat part of Afghanistan, Mongols have remained rather unchanged over the centuries (having descended from Genghis's army), including culture, race and a large part of the language. It is still quite possible this 'rule' changed over time.

Stinky Meat

[jbarr]

For a truely (almost) scientific look at what happens when you leave food out, check out the Stinky Meat Project.

Not for the faint of heart...

Re:I use the five hairs rule

[gibber]

I have three cats, a wife and periodic guests and visitors. I generally use the same rule. I have, however, one important addendum:

• No short, thick, curly hairs.