The debate over the so-called 5-Second Rule used to keep me awake nights. I grew up believing – from my own experience – that if you dropped something on the floor, it was okay to pick it up right away and eat it, just the same. The mess you made might be a bigger worry…
An Expert has finally come down on the side of Common Sense
in the eternal 5-Second Rule controversey…
I also knew that my mother – a member of the last stay-at-home mom’s generation – mopped the kitchen floor every day and scrubbed it twice a week, so that bolstered my contention that the floor as safe. I can recall discussing the issue with my peers. The vast majority of us were in agreement, that the 5-Second Rule was valid. Of course, we never picked stuff up off the ground outside, or the basement floor. We just used common sense.
And none of us ever got sick from following the 5-Second Rule. In fact, I believe we all benefited from eating a piece of face-down-on-the-floor toast and Jelly now an them, by exposing ourselves to mild doses of the germs that were naturally floating around the house anyway. After all, that’s the principle behind vaccination. (And, no, I don’t believe vaccines are bad or cause Autism or any other disease or condition. And I don’t want to get into that issue in this space. Period.)
Then came the germ-fearing generation…
My mother was of the pre-WW II generation, which used about only a half dozen or so cleaning products, and the post-war generations, to whom the soap and disinfectant industries have pushed all manner of cleaners, sanitizers and other germ obliterators.
There’s a theory, in scientific circles, that the rise in popularity of these myriad new cleaning products has resulted in a decline in the natural immunity of kids and adults who grew up since the War. They simply haven’t been exposed, in benign, normal ways, to the germs that naturally inhabit their environments. Sitting inside in front of screens all day doesn’t help them come to terms, germ-wise with their world, either.
The situation escalates…
Many folks today are prime targets for even more products we don’t, or shouldn’t need. I recently saw an ad for a ‘Gum Detoxifying’ Toothpaste. What was wrong with old-fashioned Toothpaste? Why do we need different cleaners for the kitchen and the bathroom sinks? And what’s with all the hand-cleansing products? Do we really need Hand Sanitizer, Fresh Wipes and all that stuff? When I was in culinary school, we were taught to simply wash our hands frequently, between tasks, and especially after handling Meat.
I believe the rest is little more than a brazen attempt by the Soap and Disinfectant industry to get us all to spend more money on their products and further enrich their shareholders.
But I’m drifting off topic…
This is a Food issues blog, after all. So back to the alleged subject of today’s post: The 5-Second Rule.
There has been much debate about that ‘rule’ over the past several decades, as folks, especially moms, became more and more germ-conscious – thanks to the non-stop advertising onslaught from the Soap and Disinfectant people.
A few years back, when the original crew of crazies still hosted the Mythbusters TV series, the two founders and senior staffers took it upon themselves to test the 5-Second Rule once and for all. But their science was flawed, in my judgement. They took swabs of the floor in their staff lunch room and let them simmer overnight in a warm, bacteria-developing environment. That’s how they test for bacteria in labs, so that’s how the Mythbusters did it. And, sure as heck, there were abundant bacteria in the sample Petri dishes the next morning.
My problem with that was – as I said earlier – there are always bacteria around and, if you swab-up a small sample from the floor and let it multiply in ideal conditions overnight, you’re certain to get a big bloom by morning.
Now an Expert comes down on my side…
Finally… A germ expert, Professor Anthony Hilton, from Aston University in the UK, insists that food that’s been dropped on the floor and stays there just a few seconds is usually safe to eat.
“Obviously, food covered in visible dirt shouldn’t be eaten, but as long as it’s not obviously contaminated, the science shows that food is unlikely to have picked up harmful bacteria from a few seconds spent on an indoor floor,” Hilton explains. “That is not to say that germs can’t transfer from the floor to the food. Our research has shown that the nature of the floor surface, the type of food dropped on the floor and the length of time it spends on the floor can all have an impact on the number [of bacteria] that can transfer.”
That’s exactly what I’ve been saying for decades.
Just goes to show that even Experts are open to the occasional jolt of common sense…
If you still can’t come to some agreement…
I assume there will be more, rather than less, debate among family members after this new opinion on the 5-Second Rule gets around. If you still can’t come to an agreement on the issue, just get a Dog. She’ll be glad to clean up any food that’s dropped on the floor – within about a second and a half of it landing.
~ Maggie J.