We’ve all done it, a piece of food suddenly falls off your fork onto the floor and immediately you say out loud, “Five second rule.”
You pick it up and pop it your mouth. All’s right with the world. Maybe your child dropped a lollipop or a piece of candy, and they quickly pick it up and you think, oh well, the five second rule is in play. Or maybe not.
According to 1000AwesomeThings.com: the Five Second Rule simply states that any food dropped on the floor is perfectly fine to eat as long as you pick it up in less than five seconds.
The rule has many variations, including The Three Second Rule, The Seven Second Rule, and the extremely handy and versatile The However Long It Took Me To Pick This Food Up Rule.
By testing various foods on different surfaces to see how fast bacteria transfers to it, they found that bacteria can jump on our dropped snacks in under 1 second, which of course is bad news for clumsy eaters everywhere.
Sorry to burst your bubble, just try not to miss your mouth.
Oh my goodness.. I have been in the restaurant business for over 60 years.. and all that time that is a running JOKE.. Not a ‘rule’..
You drop someones steak on the floor ‘5 second rule’ someone yells, then it get’s joked about being picked back up and served to you.. But it would not matter if it was down there for 3 hours or 3 seconds.. ‘5 second rule’ was always a joke. The fact someone spent money on this kind of research is in between funny and stupid.