Many people around the world believe in the five-second rule for dropped food. What does that mean? It is believed that if you pick up the food within five seconds of dropping, it may not be contaminated by germs.
Some of us would eat food off the floor, if we think the floor is clean or if the food is not moist.
Sometimes, we also don’t mind food that’s been dropped on the table compared to food that’s been dropped on the carpet. Some of us would eat it, if no one is watching. This has happened to all of us and that may be the reason why the five-second rule has garnered scholarly attention.
Jillian Clarke of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, received the 2004 Ig Nobel Prize in public health, for her study on this. She found that even a brief exposure, less than 5 seconds, of food to a tile treated with E.coli bacteria, can contaminate it. Donald Schaffner, a Rutgers University biologist, and his team, experimented with various surfaces like carpet, stainless steel, ceramic tile and wood. They dropped food items such as watermelon cubes, buttered bread and plain bread onto surfaces smeared with the bacteria Enterobacter aerogenes. They found that moist food attracted more bacteria than dry ones. Stainless steel passed on the germs more quickly than carpet. The study concluded that bacteria would transfer from a surface to the food, rather instantaneously.
If you ask us, we would suggest, why take a risk? Moist or dry, stainless steel or carpet, it is best to avoid dropped food.
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