Is the 5 second rule justified?

Submitted by kate.searle on

The five second rule: almost everyone has used this rule to avoid the fact that their food is dirty after they have dropped it. The five second rule shouldn’t be applied to a fallen snack because five seconds is way too long for food to remain in contact with the floor. Shoes are contaminated with bacteria, and people walk all over leaving trails of those bacteria. If the food were to be consumed, the pH of saliva and stomach acids would not be able to fight against the contaminated foods. The five second rule is just a fabled trick for people to save their food.

Five seconds seems like it should be a long enough time to wait, right? But in reality it only takes one femtosecond on the ground for food to be contaminated. Touch is thought to be two things coming in contact with one another, but technically, electrons are just resisting the other objects electrons, resulting in a small vibration. Vibrations are measured in a quadrillionth of a second, or one femtosecond. “Within five seconds, over 150 bacteria can be collected on your food. And with the food left for a full minute, the rate multiplied by ten” (Fox).

Wherever people walk they are dragging around countless species of different bacteria. “Ninety-three percent of shoes are contaminated with fecal bacteria,”claims University of Arizona. According to the same university, nine different species of bacteria were found on peoples shoes. These types of bacteria can cause infections in our stomachs, eyes, and lungs. Bacteria live longer on shoes than other places. This causes new and different bacteria to cling on to shoes. The researchers at the University of Arizona tested to see if bacteria on shoes would transfer to the tile floors in a house. More than 90 percent of the time it did, and carpeting harbors bacteria even more.

Helicobacter pylori is the only bacteria proven to  live preferentially in the stomach. This infection seems to run in families and is more common where people live in crowded or unsanitary conditions. The pH of the stomach varies from 1-3 on the acidic scale. Some bacteria such as Helicobacter pylori can survive that amount of acidity. This bacteria can cause a peptic ulcer (characterized by sores that form in the stomach or the upper part of the small intestine, called the duodenum). “This disease is transferred like any other disease, and can be prevented by washing your hands,” says a study.

Other people would state that fallen food seems fine after five seconds, so they just have at it. The food seems clean to the human eye, and nothing has happened to them yet. Sometimes people know that they had just cleaned the floor a few hours ago, so the food should be as good as new. When someone drops food that they absolutely crave, they wouldn’t want to seem like a pig and just pick it up and eat it. So they useh the five second rule so their reputation of cleanliness would be fine. Snack after snack fell from clumsy hands, until finally, the rule was officially created.

 

Sometimes food is picked off of the floor after being dropped, and other times it is just thrown away. For some reason the human mind switches from using the rule to not. People almost never take enough caution as to watch what foods to eat. Contaminated or not, it seems as though the appearance hasn't changed. A 2003 study reported that “70% of women and 56% of men surveyed were familiar with the five-second rule and that women were more likely than men to eat food that had been dropped on the floor”. Certain bacteria could kill, and no amount of cleaning product can completely stop them. Kicking the bucket is not worth it for a measly piece of dirty grub.

Attributions
Ben Phillips
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