I personally don’t make it a habit of eating food I have dropped on the floor, but my kids do it all the freaking time and they are pretty healthy kids.
Hard candies that have not already been salivated upon are exempt from the 5 second rule.
If I find an M&M on my floor and it looks okay, I’m probably gonna eat it.
However… if a chicken wing falls into a gigantic dustbunny… And I grab it 2 seconds later, Im probably just gonna trash it. If it falls on tile and I inspect it for and remove any stray strand of hair that might’ve attached itself to my dear chicken wing… Im still eating the wing.
Im pretty sure most of us ate our share of dirt as children and no one seemed to notice. No sense in growing up now.
ya know… ya think you picked the last dog hair off… but you always end up pulling one out of your mouth!
anything moist or wet is the 'ol ten second rule for me.
Anything dry is fair game from the time it hits the floor until it goes bad (as in mold and whatnot.)
The 7 second rule always works for me.Unless it’s cheese,buttered or other moist side down.
Newbie checking in here…
Was that CDC study that was listed in the other tread real? Or did someone just make that up. It sounded like a joke when I read it. If it’s real, is there anyway to get a link?
Oh, BTW, I’m a floor eater too. Anything not too sticky that falls on a surface that isn’t too crudy is fair game. I am very rarely sick as well.
I work at McDoanlds. I’ve had employees swear to me that the 5 second rule is legit, because some punk ass teenager told them so. Do you know how scary it is to see someone drop your sandwich on the floor, pick it up quickly, and pass it up for you? Yeah. I personally make all my own food. Too many stupid fucks out there.
Personally, I like the commercial (but I may have a new-parent bias).
Anyway, the ‘5-second rule’ is just a humorous saying about not being uptight…no need to take it so seriously!
I thought it was the “God made dirt and dirt don’t hurt” rule?
If a piece of uncooked meat gets (minorly) contaminated, is it safe to eat it anyway if I cook the hell out of it first?
Uncooked meat is easy, just rinse it off first, then cook it. Except hamburger meat. Just pick the dog hairs off, then cook it.
Christ, you guys don’t want to know how many times I’ve let my kid have his pacifier back after it’s fallen on the ground in public places.
Does that mean Cranky has two or three kids? She can’t have ONE because:
If you have one child and the pacifier falls on the floor you autoclave it before giving it back.
If you have two children you wipe the pacifier off on your pants before giving it back.
If you have three children you let the dog lick off the pacifier before giving it back.
What I find interesting about the five-second rule is how it and its variations have crossed the country, or even Western culture, without mention in the media before that commercial. I’ve known about it for decades. It is like there is a separate kids’ subculture through which urban legends and things like this rule are passed with no help from adults. It bears study. So, who wants a topic for their Anthropology or Sociology doctoral thesis?
Oh, and games, too. Who was taught to play “Red Rover” or “Simon Says” by an adult?
I was an institutional cook for a while and a girlfriend of mine was a nurse. From what I learned, I don’t eat anything that falls on the ground and if you drop something in a public place, pick it up and put it in your mouth, you have no idea what you’re risking.
For one thing, when you stroll around outside on public grounds, you are walking in things like spit, snot, urine, feces, stuff from under dumpsters, animal waste and assorted chemicals, because others walked through the stuff and tracked it around. People walk in public restrooms, pick up traces of urine, feces and anything else spilled there, then track it around.
Anyone walking around a dumpster gets the rotted ooz on their soles and take it along with them. People spit, drop gum, drop snotty tissues and even diapers on the ground. A bit of rain spreads this stuff around. People walk through it and track it around. The guy who sprays your lawn or house for bugs steeps his rubber boots in toxic chemicals and walks it around.
You work in a hospital? Hospital floors are among the most dangerous around. Staff walk through anything on the floor and track it around. If you work in the ER, you step in blood and bodily fluids and track it in halls, in the cafeteria, in the bathroom and eventually, home.
I’ve cringed when I’ve seen women pick up a pacifier their drooling kid popped out onto the shiny floor, then casually wipe it off and pop it back in sonny’s maw. I know what those customers have brought in from outside on their shoes!
Plus, the stock room floor is covered with spilled chemicals, spoiled food traces, things from the beds of trucks, and from the soiled floors around urinals.
So, you pick up that wet pacifier, wipe it off, chances are it landed in a trace of someone’s urine and wiping it off is not going to get rid of all of the bacteria. You’re poking a strangers p**s in your kids mouth. Or traces of someone’s spit, which might be harboring tuberculosis, or traces of someone’s feces, which might have hepatitis in it.
Bar bathrooms are as bad as hospitals. Drunks miss the urinals and toilets, and people upchuck in there. Others walk in the stuff, and transport it beyond the bar. You walk in public and transport the remainder into your home.
Think about it.
We always had the ‘It’s not dirty till its been dropped twice rule’… just what it says and as Grandma likes to say ‘You gotta eat a peck of dirt before you die’ I don’t usually eat off the floor but generally it doesn’t always bother me unless the floor is absolutely filthy…
AVSC916, you do a fine job of arguing that the ground/floor is dirty. So how do you take off your shoes? You don’t touch them, do you? Cause those germs have probably crawled all over them. Maybe onto your feet too! Then when you take them off, that crap gets on your hands. And then your hands touch your food, and it’s really hard to believe you aren’t dead yet.
It’s the kind of thing where it’s virtually impossible to prove a link between a given dropping incident and a given sickness. So you end up with two types of people: those who think about how dirty the ground is, and assume that they would get sick from it, and don’t eat the food, and those who realize they aren’t actually sick all that often, and so don’t worry about the ground, and eat it.
You wouldn’t believe how many times it happens in resturants! Especially with frozen foods. And raw foods. I haven’t seen too many with foods ready to go to the guests.
It’s about the same at home too. If its raw or frozen it can be washed off and cooked. If it’s done and it hits the trash since we have cats and a dog. Yeah, you never seem to get that last hair off!
Lighten up! Some of you only live once, and if you can’t live a little this time around what can you talk about in the afterlife?
I think that if you protect your children so much from germs they dont ever build up immunities and this can be much worse when they do get exposed to germs. Im not saying that you should send kids to lick round the toilet bowl, but its wrong to protect them completely. I will eat stuff off the floor if it and the floor looks clean - and never to my knowledge got ill from it. I wouldnt eat something sticky though or if it had been dropped outside. Thats taking it a bit far.
Me also, but that’s besides the point.
I never eat anything dropped in a public place, but have consumed things dropped in my own home. In a restaurant, if my fork falls on the floor, I ask for a new one because those floors aren’t cleaned until night, after the place closes or the business slows down.
Same thing in a grocery store, because the density of the foot traffic is very high, and after a rain storm, you drag in whatever is on the parking lot, like pulped disposable diapers, used.
In my home, once inside, I kick off my shoes and change into another set. The mudroom, or coat room, has the floor washed daily with an antibacterial cleaner, which, because the room is small, is like a 2 minute job.
Now, when camping, if I drop something I’ll rinse or dust it off and eat it because the dirt is actually cleaner than the floor in a grocery store. At home, if I drop food, it gets rinsed, especially if meat, or dusted off. Something sticky gets tossed into the garbage.
I just figured the 5 second rule was crap and figured ya’ll might want to know what’s actually on the ground.
I still find no excuse for a parent picking up dropped candy or a pacifier from a public floor, wiping it off and giving it back to a kid. Next time you go shopping, look casually at all of the feet tromping around and think about where they’ve been.
Years ago, they cooked up meals, and what was not eaten was stored in a food safe until the next meal. No refrigeration. Sometimes, this food would be rewarmed the next day and consumed, but left overs by the end of the second day, depending upon the weather, would start to get high, that is, grow bacteria and toxins. We don’t do that anymore, so blindly eating things from a public floor shouldn’t be readily done either.
This bit about eating a peck of dirt is cool, dirt, that is, not traces of urine, feces, saliva and roach spray. Our immunity systems are strong, but can be compromised by ingesting things we shouldn’t. Why risk it?