5 Second Rule

5 SECOND RULE

Many people like you may wonder if the five second rule is actually “acceptable” or healthy. It’s said that if you are eating something or about to eat something and it falls onto the floor you have five seconds to pick it up and eat before it is considered “dirty”.

Two biology students once studied and tested this axiom and later believed it to be correct. They did a series of experiments by dropping different kinds of foods on the ground such as apple slices and skittles then later measured how much time it would take before the dangerous bacteria made the food unsafe. After; they concluded that you can wait up to thirty seconds to pick up and eat “wet” food off the ground and when it comes to skittles, you can wait up to about five mintues.

In contrary to this belief, many other educated people believe that it should be the zero second rule because bacteria can immediately cling to dropped food. There are many factors that play against this rule such as the cleanliness of the floor and the type of food that has fallen. One stated, simply: 'When you drop food, two things are likely to happen; traces of the food stick to the floor, and trace of the floor (or what's on the floor) stick to the food. Therefore, unless the floor is “surgically clean”, the food will have a gained a new group of bugs, but you still pick it up quickly.’

Those who preach this theory are most likely simply trying to justify not wasting food.