Story Archive

The Rationalization Rule

The “Five-Second Rule” is bunk, according to a two-year study published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, the journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The “rule” — that it’s safe to eat food that falls on the floor if you pick it up within 5 seconds — isn’t valid, says lead author Professor Donald W. Schaffner, a food microbiologist at New Jersey’s Rutgers University. Wet foods, such as sliced watermelon, pick up more germs, and faster, but even dry foods get some germs from “surface cross-contamination” — the sixth most common factor in food-borne illness. Dr. Schaffner understands people grow complacent. “The first kid, the pacifier falls on the floor, [and it’s] ‘Oh my God, we have to sterilize it!’,” he says. “By the third kid, it’s like, ‘whatever’.” Yet “Bacteria can contaminate instantaneously,” he says, noting that in 2,560 tests using various foods touching various surfaces for varying amounts of time from less than 1 second on up, not one sample was free of contamination. (RC/New York Times) ...The next study: are third kids more sickly in life, or more healthy due to their more-exercised immune systems?