For those of you who aren’t familiar with the five second rule, it’s the one that says if you drop some food on the floor but pick it up within five seconds, it’s okay to eat it. I’ve flat lived by that rule all my life, depending on the food, of course. I didn’t invoke it the time I dumped a whole pan of lasagna on the kitchen floor. Much as I love lasagna, I wasn’t about to try and scoop it off the floor and eat it. We had two dogs back then and I didn’t need a microscope to tell me there would be lots of dog hair in that mess on the floor.
No one is happy until they disprove things and someone set out to disprove this old wives tale. That led to several studies about how fast germs jump on dropped food plus some interesting side results.
I wasn’t a bit surprised to read that folks who drop candy are more likely to pick it up and eat it than if they dropped vegetables. Then the researchers discovered more women knew about the rule than men. Makes sense since over the long haul of human existence, women have spent more time cooking than men. The way I look at it, more men would know about the rule if more men listened to the women in their lives.
Usually, food dropped on a tile floor didn’t end up having as many germs on it as food dropped on a carpet because germy stuff survives better in carpet. Which also makes sense since it’s harder to wash a carpet than a tile floor so folks tend to wash tile floors more often. But in the end, the surface didn’t really matter since germs jump from any flooring to the food really fast. It’s more a matter of how many of those little rascals jump than whether or not they jump.
While I’m sure all this scientific info is true, I’ll probably continue invoking the five second rule, especially with candy. Leastways, I figure I’ll pick it up until I can’t bend over anymore. And I should be able to touch the floor for a few more years because as you may remember, two years ago I joined a Tai Chi class. And believe you me, those folks are all about being flexible.
Comments
Post a Comment