The researchers’ basis for determining if the dropped food is safe to eat depends on ascertaining what bacterial load they pick up from a dirty surface after various intervals. But that does not address the likelihood that the added bacterial load is probably an infinitesimal addition to the daily bacterial load to which we are exposed already, from the same varieties of microbes, even if we never eat a piece of dropped food. More important, although I am not a bacteriologist or an immunologist, I seem to recall an argument that exposure to dirt should be considered akin to an inoculation, invigorating the immune system, and that an obsession with cleanliness may actually leave a person in immunological jeopardy when the time comes to defend oneself. At least that’s my reasoning when I eat something I’ve dropped…and I utilize something more like a thirty-second rule.
Is the "Five-Second Rule" a Myth?
“Harold McGee, also known as the New York Times’ “Curious Cook,” has an article about a new paper from a Clemson University research group led by Paul Dawson on the validity of the “five-second rule” — the old adage that if you drop food on the floor but pick it up within five seconds, it’s okay to eat it. According to a 2003 survey conducted by Jillian Clarke (a high-school intern at the University of Illinois who later won an Ig Nobel Prize for her research), more than 50% of adult men and 70% of adult women knew of the five-second rule, and many said they followed it. Now the Clemson researchers have gathered data to assess its validity once and for all. The results?” [read on] (Freakonomics Blog via walker)
