The 5-Second Rule Investigated 112
j-beda writes "Here is an interesting report on a student project about the 5-second rule: ' If You Drop It, Should You Eat It? Scientists Weigh In on the 5-Second Rule.' 'According to Clarke, a senior at the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, the 5-second rule dates back to the time of Genghis Khan, who first determined how long it was safe for food to remain on a floor when dropped there. Khan had slightly lower standards, however; he specified 12 hours, more or less.' How long can you safely leave dropped food on the floor before picking it up to eat? You know you've always wanted to have the definitive answer ..."
First... (Score:2, Funny)
Findings don't just apply to floors (Score:5, Funny)
Cookies and candy (Score:2)
Depends on the floor (Score:4, Interesting)
Simple and apparently effective, at least I can't verify that I have gotten sick from it yet.
Not the floor (Score:5, Funny)
1) How hungry I am
2) How good the food is
3) How able I am to replace the food I dropped
Health be damned!
"It goes into a pit of acid" (Score:2)
I guess he was right. I mean hey, look at dogs - they eat their own poop half the time and the worst thing that happens is that they barf up some grass that they just chewed.
People are much more squeemish than they need to be.
Re:"It goes into a pit of acid" (Score:1)
Re:"It goes into a pit of acid" (Score:2)
Re:"It goes into a pit of acid" (Score:1)
As my mom said: Dirt don't hurt
Re:Not the floor (Score:3, Interesting)
Lousy Experiment (Score:5, Funny)
What they should do is to hire 500 students to continually drop food and candy on the floor, pick it up again for consumption, and then monitor their well-being over the course of many weeks. Those wimps
Re:Depends on the floor (Score:3, Insightful)
As for the 5 second rule, who cares, once it falls on the surface, it's contaminated. But EVERYTHING in life is contaminated with something. Do I think I'll get sick fro
I use the five hair rule (Score:5, Funny)
I have a dog, four cats a wife two daughters and a niece. If it comes off the ground with more than 5 hairs or if a hair is more than 5 inches it's no good.
Re:I use the five hair rule (Score:4, Funny)
You had to be crude, but then you couldn't even do it right.
He's bragging that he's surrounded by all that pussy.
That way you include the cats.
Re:I use the five hair rule (Score:1)
Re:I use the five hairs rule (Score:2, Funny)
Only One Suprise, Guess At The 12 Hour Rule (Score:4, Interesting)
That's the one that really suprises me. The rest make sense in some way. This is the only one that I was suprised at. I would expect men would be more likely, equal at worst.
As for the 12 hour rule, gross! Of course, they didn't know about bacteria or microbes, or such so I guess as far as they saw, there was no reason not to eat the food off then floor unless the floor was quite visibly dirty or some such. The 12 hour part probably has more to do with the food being found by ants and flies than anything else.
Re:Only One Suprise, Guess At The 12 Hour Rule (Score:4, Insightful)
My experience (at least in high school and college) that my buddies floors were quite unsanitariy.
Re:Only One Suprise, Guess At The 12 Hour Rule (Score:3, Insightful)
That mildly shocked me as well. I wonder what the margin was and how they arrived at these conclusions. It's pretty easy to imagine an 18 year old high school senior named Jillian adversly affecting the results of her experiements if they were conducted improperly. What I mean is, there's a lot of guys out there that wouldn't eat off any floor in front of a young attractive girl, especially when their behavior was the subject of said
Re:Only One Suprise, Guess At The 12 Hour Rule (Score:2)
Actually, most of my food isn't cooked at all. Go read through this [ucdavis.edu] and see if, using your current preparation methods, you still think it makes a big difference if your food hits the ground. Do you use a wooden cutting board? Ever let things thaw outside of refrigeration? Ever have eggs a little runny? When you reheat something like pizza, do you cook it
Re:Only One Suprise, Guess At The 12 Hour Rule (Score:1)
As men are less likely to tell them that it fell on the floor....
5 seconds? Disgusting (Score:3, Funny)
Mmm... (Score:3, Funny)
Trash Cookies! (Score:2)
Nasty.... (Score:4, Insightful)
You might want to, as much as we all now want to go BOFH on every person we know, but in the end, our family and friends eat there, and what's the extra 5 minutes?
One thing I've learned from doing both tech and "hard labor" while I was younger is: professionalism is professionalism. That cook doesn't want you eating that nasty steak more than a professional programmer wants his unfinished project to be released early.
Re:Nasty.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Nasty.... (Score:4, Funny)
My experience was that when a slab of meat hit the floor, the call went out on the line to hold it for the next shmoe who asked for his steak to be well done.
I am a vegetarian these days.
Re:Nasty.... (Score:2)
I actually don't see a problem with that, as long as it's re-cooked. If it was only on the floor for a second, you scrape the dirt off, and the recooking kills all the germs and bacteria.
Re:Nasty.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Nasty.... (Score:1)
Remember, if you want _clean_ food, don't piss off the manager!
Re:Nasty.... (Score:2)
Re:Nasty.... (Score:2)
Re:Nasty.... (Score:1)
Re:Nasty.... (Score:1)
Student life (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Student life (Score:1)
Now I just need to find a good OOG THE CAVEMAN post :-)
It's good on the first bounce! (Score:2)
Re:It's good on the first bounce! (Score:1)
More importantly, (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:More importantly, (Score:1)
Lori-stunted intellectual (marijuanna impaired)
She would fall to the floor and eat it off it, than giggle like a mad genius.
Cathy-Super mother of 2 with a penchant for eating something new every time I saw her.
She would shit can it, and than drive 20 miles to an obscure ethnic place and get something else.
Jennifer-Meth Addict (nuf said)
She would use it as an excuse not to eat.
Joy-Current love of my life
I would not let her eat it, I might though. I
Re:More importantly, (Score:2)
um, yuck (Score:2)
Re:um, yuck (Score:5, Informative)
it's still a big fat yuck (Score:2)
Re:it's still a big fat yuck (Score:2)
not a problem, (Score:2)
Re:um, yuck (Score:1)
Re:um, yuck (Score:2)
>>You're really just eating everything that hands have touched.
I guess they haven't discovered cutlery in your part of the world yet
Re:um, yuck (Score:2)
Re:um, yuck (Score:2)
My comment was intended as a joke (everyone eats with their fingers occasionally), but in fact you've just proved my point. You regard fast food, eaten with your fingers, as the norm. I regard it as the exception, to be done only when there's no alternative. You should get out of America more. There are some cultures where eating anything with your fingers is taboo - I remember being amazed seeing Chinese eat shell & eat a crab entirely using chopstick, when it would be far easier to use fingers.
Re:um, yuck (Score:2)
And you didn't heed my sig. I never wrote that and you incorrectly assumed it. I merely gave fast-food examples that Joe Sixpack could relate to. Most people eat brie or caviar (on crackers) with their fingers as well.
That doesn't make it either right, practical, or rational.
Re:um, yuck (Score:2)
You wrote that "most people" eat such foods with their fingers. To me that's the same as writing that you regard it as normal, since "normal" is pretty much defined as that which most people do. Are you suggesting that if you wrote "I ate a hamburger today", I would be wrong to assume or infer that you're not a vegetarian?
I merely gave fast-food examples that Joe Sixpack could relate to.
I'm touched by your concern that
Re:um, yuck (Score:5, Funny)
Re:um, yuck (Score:5, Informative)
Re:um, yuck (Score:2)
yuck..
but then again.. at parts of my tables theres the same problem.
Re:um, yuck (Score:2)
Do you know.... (Score:2)
Did you know the floor has fewer bacteria, yeasts and fungi than the inside of your mouth?
Did you know urine from a healthy human has less bacteria, yeasts and fungi than the inside of your mouth?
Did you know urine from a healthy human has antibiotic and antifungal properties and can be used to cure foot fungus?
Did you know one of the cause
eating a fruit that's a little rotten (Score:2)
Three Words: Deficient Immune System (Score:1)
I've noticed that people who are excessively clean tend to actually get sick more often than people who just don't care. Your body is "designed" (if I may take such a liberty) to deal with bacteria in a fairly efficient way.
In the same way, people that try to avoid getting sick when the latest round of colds comes around is only making it worse for themselves. If you can catch a cold closely to the time after you got sick the last time, you probably won't even notice it, but it's that much longer until
Deep Fry It (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Deep Fry It (Score:5, Funny)
I just want to know how they get the floor to fit in the fryer.
Haiku (Score:1, Funny)
Bacteria get to eat
And I move to pie
Is Big Brother watching? (Score:2)
Re:Is Big Brother watching? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is Big Brother watching? (Score:1)
I contest that eating non-lethal doses of contaminants has increased my resistance to them. I tell myself that that's why my mum let me eat dirt as a kid.
bacteria (Score:2, Informative)
Re:bacteria (Score:3, Funny)
On the other hand, now if food hits the floor, or even the counter sometimes, I just let the dogs have it, unless it's someth
Re:bacteria (Score:4, Funny)
How nice! The fresh fruit and berries must have gone well with your bugs.
obDisclaimer: I live in the country now, and the kids and I love finding interesting and unusual bugs [dirtdoctor.com].
Especially in Chem Lab (Score:3, Funny)
Or at least take some of the load off my poor stomach.....
so how long does it take? (Score:5, Funny)
fourty-one fourty (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm stickin with it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm stickin with it (Score:3, Informative)
Escherisha Coli is considered part of normal gut flora (Coli - refers to where it was first 'discovered' - the human colon). Some variants of e.coli are harmful though - but these are normally outcompeted by the usually benign resident population of e.coli.
If you don't have a resident population of e.coli - you in trouble.
Re:I'm stickin with it (Score:1)
Re:I'm stickin with it (Score:2, Funny)
O.K. you got me there. I promise if I drop a cookie into my intestine, I won't be putting it back into my mouth.
No matter what
Re:I'm stickin with it (Score:1)
Finally, a use for my MicroBiology degree
5 second rule? (Score:5, Funny)
Or rather they do, but they look at you with puppy dog eyes and you're forced to drop the food again.
I'm a waiter! (Score:1)
And fluids? (Score:2)
BTW, I (and my co-worker) are two of those 44% that have never heard of that rule before.
Depends on where you stand (Score:4, Funny)
Not true about Genghis Khan (Score:4, Interesting)
In Hazarajat part of Afghanistan, Mongols have remained rather unchanged over the centuries (having descended from Genghis's army), including culture, race and a large part of the language. It is still quite possible this 'rule' changed over time.
Where I come from (Score:2)
Stinky Meat (Score:5, Insightful)
Not for the faint of heart...
Where I am from.... (Score:1)
The ancients never reused food (Score:2)
Havent they also found that... (Score:2)
Maybe eating the bacteria is a good thing, folks. That which does not kill you makes you stronger...
Herpes (Score:1)
I never follow that rule... (Score:1)
5 second rule is known to Americans only ? (Score:1)
Is this an american/english rule or is it only unknown in France ?