Monday, October 3, 2016

The "Five Second Rule" is a Myth!

We've all heard of the "Five Second Rule." It applies to picking up a piece of food within five seconds of dropping it in order to still be able to eat it without germs. Researchers at Rutgers University now tell us that there's 2,560 reasons to ignore that myth once and for all.

The researchers disproved the five second rule 2,560 times. They dropped different food types onto dirty surfaces. In less than one second, some foods were already covered in enough germs to make you sick. Moist foods were the worst and foods dropped on carpet only fared slightly better than foods dropped on hard surfaces.

The findings appear online in the American Society for Microbiology’s journal, Applied and Environmental Microbiology. The researchers tested four surfaces – stainless steel, ceramic tile, wood and carpet – and different foods. They also looked at four different contact times – less than one second, five, 30 and 300 seconds.

The study concluded that the transfer of bacteria from surfaces to food appears to be affected most by moisture. Essentially, the wetter the food, the higher the risk of transfer. Also, longer food contact times usually result in the transfer of more bacteria from each surface to food.

So, while research demonstrates that the five-second rule is “real” in the sense that longer contact time results in more bacterial transfer, it also shows other factors, including the nature of the food and the surface it falls on, are of equal or greater importance.

From Him, Through Him, For Him (Romans 11:36),

Paul J. Staso
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