Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Remember the 5-Second Rule?

Do you ever remember using the five-second rule as a little kid? Or maybe even now? Well, did you ever wonder if picking up your food in the time slot of five seconds really worked? Well you’re in luck because in 2007 there was a study done to see if this 5-second rule really was “beneficial” and not just another tale we were told as kids.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Five_second.png
In a study published in 2007, Clemson University researchers tested salmonella placed on wood, tile, or carpet. The bologna was dropped on the different types of surfaces for 5, 30, or 60 seconds. The results were pretty astonishing! On both wood and tile, more than 99 percent of the bacteria were transferred from the surfaces to the bologna almost immediately and there was no difference by the time of contact. The carpet surface also had no difference by contact time, but the number of bacteria transferred was smaller. “The amount transferred decreased over hours, but there were still thousands of bacteria per square centimeter on the surfaces after 24 hours, and hundreds survived on the surfaces for as long as four weeks.”


So in other words, the five-second rule does not apply! For one, I think this article is interesting because of the results! Almost immediately bacteria is transferred from the floor to your food! I think this article is well written because it gets straight to the point. That point being, the five-second rule doesn’t really work (for some, like we’ve been told). What puzzles me though, is this with all foods and not just bologna? I think this study should have consisted more information on if there were certain types of foods that attracted more bacteria. Or if certain bacteria were only attracted to certain foods?  This article can make you think, was my childhood just a lie? On a serious note like Dr. Roy M. Gulick said in the article, “The five-second rule probably should become the zero-second rule.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/science/01qna.html?action=click&module=Search&region=searchResults%230&version=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fquery.nytimes.com%2Fsearch%2Fsitesearch%2F%23%2Fmicrobiology%2F&_r=0
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2 comments:

  1. UnknownMarch 13, 2014 at 11:30 AM

    Angelo, this article must have been really fun to read. I remember applying the 5-second rule all the time growing up. It is interesting to see that even in five seconds tons of bacteria are transferred from the floor to the bologna. I would like to know if dry foods attract the same amount of bacteria as more wet foods do? It also makes me wonder, when we clean our floors are really picking up all the microbes or are some spread from on area to another. I think that if we ingest a piece of food that was dropped and then infected we could catch a disease but what if we pick up good bacteria are we helping our microbiome? There are many questions that arise from this article but they also address really great issues, such as that there is no such thing as a 5-second rule. It is important for us to stay healthy and to also keep our microbiomes healthy.

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  2. Alana Simmons-ChibasMarch 13, 2014 at 10:13 PM

    This is one of my favorite articles! I like how it can apply to everyone. I think we're all guilty of using this as an excuse to eat food after its been dropped on the floor. I've always wondered if the five, or to some, thirty second rule really applies. I figured it wouldn't, so I'm glad this article concludes my hypothesis! Really interesting!

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