Is the 5-second rule true?
In 2003, Jillian Clarke famously investigated this question. She found that 50% of men use the 5-second rule to eat food off the ground, but 70% of women do.
More importantly, she found that even brief contact with contaminated floor will contaminate food, wet or dry.
The Myth Busters found similar results, and a paper published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology got even more technical… the researchers contaminated various floor surfaces with Salmonella and they found that 5 seconds is way too long to wait. Bacteria adhere to drop food almost immediately, but time does matter.
After 5 seconds, they found that the food had acquired anywhere from 150 to 8,000 bacteria. But if left for a full minute, the number they found was 10 times greater.
Now, considering it only takes about 10 bacteria of certain strains of salmonella to infect you, you should probably think twice before eating off the ground.
