If you’ve picked it up and eaten it, you’re probably a fan of the ‘five-second rule’.
This unofficial ‘rule’ holds that if you drop food on the ground, you’ve got a five-second window to grab it and it will still be fine to eat.
It’s a theory that scientists recently debunked in a US university study which dropped a range of foods onto a variety of surfaces covered in bacteria. Their conclusion: “Bacteria can contaminate instantaneously.”
Now an American doctor Aaron E. Carroll has admitted he still eats food that has fallen on the floor.
Why?
“Because my kitchen floor isn’t really that dirty,” the pediatrics professor and co-author of a book on medical myths wrote in the New York Times. “So many other things are more dangerous than that.”
Germs just part of life
He cites one 1998 study where researchers swabbed an array of indoor surfaces: “They found that the kitchen floor was likely to harbor, on average, about three colonies per square inch of coliform bacteria (2.75 to be exact). So there are some. But here’s the thing – that’s cleaner than both the refrigerator handle (5.37 colonies per square inch) and the kitchen counter (5.75 colonies per square inch).”
Dr Carroll adds almost everything we touch is crawling with germs, from our phones and cash to computer keyboards and light switches.
His advice? Wash your hands – and realise that “for most of us, our immune systems are pretty hardy. We’ve all been touching this dirty stuff for a long time, without knowing it, and doing just fine.”
Of course, if your toast lands spread-side down, perhaps just throw it in the bin.
Do you follow the five-second rule? Tell us below.
