Five-Second Food Rule Gets Put To The Test, And The Results Are Surprising
If you’ve ever dropped your snack on the floor and quickly picked it back up, you might have done so after you convinced yourself it was okay because of the “5-Second Rule.” The rule pertains to an old wive’s tale that dictates it takes five seconds for food to pick up bacteria from the surface it’s on, so it’s still okay to eat it if you pick it up within that time.
A professor of food science at Clemson University decided to put this theory to the test. Paul Dawson dropped pieces of bread onto several different surfaces coated in salmonella bacteria. He left the pieces for anywhere from a few seconds to a minute, and then tested them. The results were definitely surprising, and they just might change how you view dropped food!
Dawson discovered that the amount of time a piece of food was on the floor didn’t really matter; what matters, he said, is how much bacteria were on that surface. Another factor to consider is the type of flooring it fell on. The study found that food dropped on carpet actually picks up fewer bacteria than food on wood or tile. So, if the next time you drop a piece of pizza on the carpet and your instinct is to toss it, you may want to reconsider.
