It's Now Safe to Eat Food That's Been Dropped On the Floor
By Lynsey Eidell. Photos: Stocksy.
If you've been using the five second rule—you know, the age-old principle that says food that's been dropped on the floor is still safe to eat if picked up within five seconds or less—your entire life (as we have), prepare to QUESTION EVERYTHING you've ever known about food and germs. Why? Because a new study has just discovered that the five-second rule should really be the 30-minute rule for certain foods.
You read that right: Some foods can be dropped on the floor for up to a half an hour and still be safe to eat. According to the study out of Aston University in Birmingham, England, "rigid foods"—such as biscuits, cookies, sandwiches, dry toast, and chocolate—can be on the floor for up to 30 minutes with little increased risk of attracting germs. "Dry foods, hard foods are really quite low-risk," the lead researcher, Professor Anthony Hilton, told the Daily Mail{: rel=nofollow}. "Not only do they not pick up much bacteria on impact with the floor, but they do not get any additional contamination over time."
The study did find, though, that certain foods were likely to pick up more bacteria the longer they remained on the floor. That list includes things like cooked pasta, chips, donuts, sweets, and buttered toast. "It is less safe to leave damper, stickier foods, which pick up more after falling and more over time," Hilton said. "The five-second rule probably does still apply to them."
It also matters what type of flooring the food falls onto: Foods dropped on laminate or tile became more contaminated than those dropped on carpet. But across all types of flooring, the food dropped picked up fewer than .0004 percent of the average 10 million bacteria found on a family floor.
So here comes the good news, germophobes: It is generally safe to eat all food that has been dropped on a residential floor that is mopped or vacuumed once a week, no matter the timing. "The chances of anyone getting ill from dropping food on the floor at home are infinitesimally small," Hilton said. "Obviously, food covered invisible dirt shouldn't be eaten, but as long as it's not obviously contaminated, the science shows that food is unlikely to have picked up harmful bacteria from a few seconds spent on an indoor floor."
We can't decide which bacteria-related revelation is better: Being able to safely eat food off the floor or never having to make our bed again, we love science.
This story originally appeared on Glamour.
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