5-Second Rule - Confirmed

[Clove]

http://aspen.conncoll.edu/news/3464.cfm

To eat or not to eat: seniors prove "five-second rule"

You hear it everywhere - the sound of a piece of food hitting the ground, immediately followed by someone yelling, "five-second rule!" The prospective eater must then pick the food up off the floor and make one of life´s most difficult decisions: to eat, or not to eat.

Seniors Molly Goettsche and Nicole Moin, both cellular and molecular biology majors, decided that they were no longer going to blindly follow the ´rule,´ which stipulates that dropped food will be safe to eat if it stays on the floor for fewer than five seconds.

"The five-second rule appeals to people of all ages, so is widely used, but not very well documented," Goettsche said.

The women decided to test the ´rule´ in their microbiology class with Anne Bernhard, the George and Carol Milne Assistant Professor of Biology at Connecticut College.

"We had both just finished our senior theses, so we wanted to do something lighthearted and fun," Moin said, "and we chose the five-second rule, because it applies to everyday life."

Goettsche added that they designed their procedure to test the rule in an everyday environment. Previous research on the rule, she said, was conducted by a University of Illinois researcher in 2003 and involved dropping food items onto e-coli contaminated tiles.

"That is not representative of what actually happens," she said.

Instead, Goettsche and Moin took their food samples - apple slices (wet) and Skittles candies (dry) - to the main Connecticut College dining hall, Harris Refectory, and to the snack bar in the student center. They dropped the foods onto the floors in both locations for five, 10, 30 and 60 second intervals, and also tested them after allowing five minutes to elapse. They then swabbed the foods and placed them onto agar plates designed to cultivate any bacteria that might have attached to the foods.

What Goettsche and Moin discovered may forever change the way people think of the five-second rule. "It should probably be renamed," Goettsche said. "You actually have a little more time."

The women found no bacteria were present on the foods that had remained on the floor for five, 10 or 30 seconds. The apple slices did pick up bacteria after one minute, however, and the Skittles showed a bacterial presence after remaining on the floor for five minutes. The results prove, Goettsche and Moin said, that you can wait at least 30 seconds to pick up wet foods and more than a minute to pick up dry foods before they become contaminated with bacteria.

So the next time you drop your favorite candy, cookie or other goodie you just can´t bear to toss out, you can rest assured that all you need to do is yell "five-second rule!" and continue enjoying your treat. Goettsche and Moin certainly will.

[Katt]

The Myth Busters did this myth and said it was BUSTED. That soon as the food hits the ground it picks up the bacteria.


Old ladies or myth busters....... who could be right...

[thefarmer]

Depends on where you drop it, I would guess.

[Katt]

Oooo, found something about it and if you don't agree you can even e-mail them and call them idiots!

Myth Description: ---- Is food that has fallen on the floor still safe to eat as long as it is picked up within five seconds?


MythBusters on the bust: ----


Hypothesis: ----


Procedure/Experimental Design: ---- Adam and Jamie tested wet pastrami and dry crackers both being left on the floor for two seconds and six seconds to see which had more bacteria grown on them. There were more bacteria on the wet pastrami so they used culture plates to remove any possible variations. One plate was laid on the floor for two seconds and the other for six seconds.


Results: ---- There were identical numbers of bacteria on the plate on the floor for two seconds as there were on the plate on the floor for six seconds. There were so many that they coudn't be counted.


Conclusion: ---- There was no correlation between how much bacteria food picks up and how much time it has spent on the floor. It was all about every-thing else but the time. It was how moist the food was, the surface geometry of the food, what was on the floor and how contaminated it was.

Busted or Not Busted: ---- Busted






http://mythbusters-wiki.discovery.com/page/Five-Second+Rule?t=anon

[Clove]

I had trouble following Myth-Buster's method from its description, but the article below outlines in detail the Univ. of Illinois 2004 experiment and follow-up 2007 experiment.

The Univ. of Conn. experiment was light-hearted, but the girls did stipulate that they were using real-world conditions (two locations on Conn College campus where food is routinely obtained and cosumed) instead of tiles deliberately contaminated with harmful bacteria.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/dining/09curi.html?_r=2&8dpc&oref&oref=slogin

The Five-Second Rule Explored, or How Dirty Is That Bologna?

By HAROLD McGEE
Published: May 9, 2007

A COUPLE of weeks ago I saw a new scientific paper from Clemson University that struck me as both pioneering and hilarious.

It’s a thorough microbiological study of the five-second rule: the idea that if you pick up a dropped piece of food before you can count to five, it’s O.K. to eat it.

I first heard about the rule from my then-young children and thought it was just a way of having fun at snack time and lunch. My daughter now tells me that fun was part of it, but they knew they were playing with “germs.”

We’re reminded about germs on food whenever there’s an outbreak of E. coli or salmonella, and whenever we read the labels on packages of uncooked meat. But we don’t have much occasion to think about the everyday practice of retrieving and eating dropped pieces of food.

Microbes are everywhere around us, not just on floors. They thrive in wet kitchen sponges and end up on freshly wiped countertops.

As I write this column, on an airplane, I realize that I have removed a chicken sandwich from its protective plastic sleeve and put it down repeatedly on the sleeve’s outer surface, which was meant to protect the sandwich by blocking microbes. What’s on the outer surface? Without the five-second rule on my mind I wouldn’t have thought to wonder.

I learned from the Clemson study that the true pioneer of five-second research was Jillian Clarke, a high-school intern at the University of Illinois in 2003. Ms. Clarke conducted a survey and found that slightly more than half of the men and 70 percent of the women knew of the five-second rule, and many said they followed it.

She did an experiment by contaminating ceramic tiles with E. coli, placing gummy bears and cookies on the tiles for the statutory five seconds, and then analyzing the foods. They had become contaminated with bacteria.

For performing this first test of the five-second rule, Ms. Clarke was recognized by the Annals of Improbable Research with the 2004 Ig Nobel Prize in public health.

It’s not surprising that food dropped onto bacteria would collect some bacteria. But how many? Does it collect more as the seconds tick by? Enough to make you sick?

Prof. Paul L. Dawson and his colleagues at Clemson have now put some numbers on floor-to-food contamination.

Their bacterium of choice was salmonella; the test surfaces were tile, wood flooring and nylon carpet; and the test foods were slices of bread and bologna.

First the researchers measured how long bacteria could survive on the surfaces. They applied salmonella broth in doses of several million bacteria per square centimeter, a number typical of badly contaminated food.

I had thought that most bacteria were sensitive to drying out, but after 24 hours of exposure to the air, thousands of bacteria per square centimeter had survived on the tile and wood, and tens of thousands on the carpet. Hundreds of salmonella were still alive after 28 days.

Professor Dawson and colleagues then placed test food slices onto salmonella-painted surfaces for varying lengths of time, and counted how many live bacteria were transferred to the food.

On surfaces that had been contaminated eight hours earlier, slices of bologna and bread left for five seconds took up from 150 to 8,000 bacteria. Left for a full minute, slices collected about 10 times more than that from the tile and carpet, though a lower number from the wood.

What do these numbers tell us about the five-second rule? Quick retrieval does mean fewer bacteria, but it’s no guarantee of safety. True, Jillian Clarke found that the number of bacteria on the floor at the University of Illinois was so low it couldn’t be measured, and the Clemson researchers resorted to extremely high contamination levels for their tests. But even if a floor — or a countertop, or wrapper — carried only a thousandth the number of bacteria applied by the researchers, the piece of food would be likely to pick up several bacteria.

The infectious dose, the smallest number of bacteria that can actually cause illness, is as few as 10 for some salmonellas, fewer than 100 for the deadly strain of E. coli.

Of course we can never know for sure how many harmful microbes there are on any surface. But we know enough now to formulate the five-second rule, version 2.0: If you drop a piece of food, pick it up quickly, take five seconds to recall that just a few bacteria can make you sick, then take a few more to think about where you dropped it and whether or not it’s worth eating.

--

In the end I think it really does depend on how contaminated the area you drop food in is- not how long you leave it there.

[Celephais]

Mythbusters are so incredibly unscientific with a lot of their tests... although this usually leads to better real-life circumstances and a hell of a lot more fun, I would rarely take anything they "bust" or "confirm" to the bank.

(I love Mythbusters, don't get me wrong).

[Tsa`ah]

I had trouble following Myth-Buster's method from its description, but the article below outlines in detail the Univ. of Illinois 2004 experiment and follow-up 2007 experiment.

The Univ. of Conn. experiment was light-hearted, but the girls did stipulate that they were using real-world conditions (two locations on Conn College campus where food is routinely obtained and cosumed) instead of tiles deliberately contaminated with harmful bacteria.

In this case, the Mythbuster procedure mimicked the U of I and the results of that particular experiment were more conducive to reality than the two undergrads killing time at Uconn.

U of I and Mythbusters = If a bacterial contaminant is present, your food will be contaminated. The biggest variable would be the food's surface area makeup and water saturation.

The two undergrads, while wanting to keep within the confines of everyday life, left out too many variables that could have had an impact.

How much foot traffic went through the test area daily?
How often were the test surfaces cleaned and at what intervals?
What cleaning agents were used on the test surfaces?
At what time(s) were tests conducted?
In what season of the year did these tests occur?


In the end I think it really does depend on how contaminated the area you drop food in is- not how long you leave it there.

Which is what the U of I study and the Mythbusters demonstrated.

[Katt]

Mythbusters are so incredibly unscientific with a lot of their tests... although this usually leads to better real-life circumstances and a hell of a lot more fun, I would rarely take anything they "bust" or "confirm" to the bank.

(I love Mythbusters, don't get me wrong).


LOL, Yeah I agree with you there.

[Clove]

In this case, the Mythbuster procedure mimicked the U of I and the results of that particular experiment were more conducive to reality than the two undergrads killing time at Uconn.

Conn. College, not U Conn.



How much foot traffic went through the test area daily?
How often were the test surfaces cleaned and at what intervals?
What cleaning agents were used on the test surfaces?
At what time(s) were tests conducted?
In what season of the year did these tests occur?


I don't think you really need experimental evidence to conclude that dropping food on a tile of salmonella will contaminate it. The students were demonstrating that in a relatively hygienic environment there isn't enough dangerous bacteria to worry about if your food drops on the floor for a few seconds.

One of the areas was the Conn. College cafeteria. If it's anything like a typical cafeteria the test surface is cleaned (badly) once a day. Foot traffic? It's a college caf, what do you think? Cleaning agents, time of year? Come on, man.

They simply pointed out that if you drop your apple on a floor that's about as clean as a college cafeteria- you're probably good.

[Tsa`ah]

I don't think you really need experimental evidence to conclude that dropping food on a tile of salmonella will contaminate it. The students were demonstrating that in a relatively hygienic environment there isn't enough dangerous bacteria to worry about if your food drops on the floor for a few seconds.

One of the areas was the Conn. College cafeteria. If it's anything like a typical cafeteria the test surface is cleaned (badly) once a day. Foot traffic? It's a college caf, what do you think? Cleaning agents, time of year? Come on, man.

They simply pointed out that if you drop your apple on a floor that's about as clean as a college cafeteria- you're probably good.

The point of earlier experiments was to show that time, or rather human reaction, made little difference.

My list of exclusions on the part of the undergrads was very pertinent. Are they in the cafeteria during high volume times? Before? After? Are they dropping food close to the next scheduled cleaning time or soon after?

Foot traffic is key considering the rule in question wouldn't exist without it.

Cleaning agents are very important. If they're using an anti-microbial that continues to work after the surface dries as opposed to water. Their position in relevance to the most trafficked path from the bathrooms.

Time of year is huge. Is it warm and humid (that's what horny bacteria like) or is it cold and wet ... is it arid?

All of these things will have enormous impact on the results.

[Clove]

The point of earlier experiments was to show that time, or rather human reaction, made little difference...

...when one drops food on a deliberately contaminated surface.



My list of exclusions on the part of the undergrads was very...

...Silly.

What the experiment showed was that in relatively hygienic conditions, dropping food on the floor doesn't horribly contaminate them.

Millions of 5-second rule adherents (that aren't flooding our hospitals with mysterious infections) seem to back up this conclusion.

[Tsa`ah]

What the experiment showed was that in relatively hygienic conditions, dropping food on the floor doesn't horribly contaminate them.


Moin said, "and we chose the five-second rule, because it applies to everyday life."

Goettsche added that they designed their procedure to test the rule in an everyday environment.

Again, they omitted a good deal of pertinent information.

I've seen more than a few college cafeterias and they're normally pretty clean and cleaned routinely. So the five second rule would seem to apply in college cafeterias depending on the cleaning schedule and when you decide to drop your food.

It doesn't apply to every day life simply because I doubt the rule applies to a french fry dropped on a McDonald's floor after the weekend lunch rush while the store is manned by HS students.


Millions of 5-second rule adherents (that aren't flooding our hospitals with mysterious infections) seem to back up this conclusion.

Age, health, and common sense would be the reason. Though I wouldn't want to quote even a vague number of rule fans simply because an attempt to document it hasn't even been attempted.

[CrystalTears]

Seconds?! It's not minutes? :D

One of you is taking this study way too fucking seriously. How about you just use common sense and if your french fry falls in a vat of shit, you throw it away, and if it falls on your dining room floor, munch away.

[Clove]

Again, they omitted a good deal of pertinent information.

I've seen more than a few college cafeterias and they're normally pretty clean and cleaned routinely. So the five second rule would seem to apply in college cafeterias depending on the cleaning schedule and when you decide to drop your food.

It doesn't apply to every day life simply because I doubt the rule applies to a french fry dropped on a McDonald's floor after the weekend lunch rush while the store is manned by HS students.



Age, health, and common sense would be the reason. Though I wouldn't want to quote even a vague number of rule fans simply because an attempt to document it hasn't even been attempted.

But you will vaguely discuss criteron such as the relative cleanliness of a cafeteria floor.

[Tsa`ah]

I'm Jewish toots. If it hits the ground it's garbage can fodder.

[CrystalTears]

Well then what do you care what the study states? You're gonna throw it away anyway. Relax.

[Tsa`ah]

But you will vaguely discuss criteron such as the relative cleanliness of a cafeteria floor.

There's nothing vague about it. If they clean routinely (and I'm pretty damn sure almost every college worth a damn does) it will impact the results (as it is intended to do).

Everthing I listed will have an impact .. and not a vague impact.

[Clove]

There's nothing vague about it. If they clean routinely (and I'm pretty damn sure almost every college worth a damn does) it will impact the results (as it is intended to do).

Everthing I listed will have an impact .. and not a vague impact.

Everything has an impact in any experiment, including the experimenters. You're talking out of your ass (again).

A college cafeteria floor is a pretty good site to approximate food dropping on an average clean floor.

[Tsa`ah]

Everything has an impact in any experiment, including the experimenters. You're talking out of your ass (again).

A college cafeteria floor is a pretty good site to approximate food dropping on an average clean floor.

So this is what it comes down to again. When you can't debate or offer up anything relevant in dispute of what I submitted ... I have to be talking out of my ass.

I'm sorry, but displacement seems to be your constant MO.

Their methodology was so severely flawed, even for undergrads.

[Clove]

So this is what it comes down to again. When you can't debate or offer up anything relevant in dispute of what I submitted ... I have to be talking out of my ass.

I'm sorry, but displacement seems to be your constant MO.

Their methodology was so severely flawed, even for undergrads.

You're questioning whether or not they considered factors that you suppose are important, which I assume you've amassed from your experience/education in practical experimentation (maybe you've been working on the supply-side of that for 15 years or something).

Additionally an article/=a detailed summary of an experiment. For all either of us knows some of your criterion were taken accounted for. However, they did use two different sites and both sites were reasonable places to approximate a typical clean floor.

[Tsa`ah]

You're questioning whether or not they considered factors that you suppose are important, which I assume you've amassed from your experience/education in practical experimentation (maybe you've been working on the supply-side of that for 15 years or something).

Additionally an article/=a detailed summary of an experiment. For all either of us knows some of your criterion were taken accounted for. However, they did use two different sites and both sites were reasonable places to approximate a typical clean floor.

Are you really this ignorant or is it your hardon for me?

The experience you mentioned does come in to play since it pertained to the soft drink industry and since my job was quality management. Chemistry, biochemistry, and scientific method play into this. Let's not even get into the experience gained working in the food industry prior to, during, and a short time after college.

The article offered a detailed summary for an experiment that lacked so much. I'm sorry, a snack bar and cafeteria in a college is rather limited to begin with. When you leave out factors that may (and will) have huge impacts on the results ... we call it poor methodology.

Now, if you wish to keep attacking me ... make another thread or petition for the title of this thread to be changed. After all, when you can't attack the logic, when the text beats you ... attack the person.

Predictable as always.

[Clove]

The experience you mentioned does come in to play since it pertained to the soft drink industry and since my job was quality management. Chemistry, biochemistry, and scientific method play into this. Let's not even get into the experience gained working in the food industry prior to, during, and a short time after college...

I knew you'd have a story to "qualilfy" your opinion as "expert"

[CrystalTears]

Yeah, Tsa`ah was the one who could tell you if spilled coke on the floor was okay to slurp.

Once you get to "that was my job so I should know" schtick, the thread loses its luster.

[Tsa`ah]

Yeah, Tsa`ah was the one who could tell you if spilled coke on the floor was okay to slurp.

Once you get to "that was my job so I should know" schtick, the thread loses its luster.

I didn't bring it up ... then again you'll have a post that implies I've got to have the last word and can't stop arguing.

Pom pom girl ... learn to read and do a little less cheering.

[Clove]

Yeah, Tsa`ah was the one who could tell you if spilled coke on the floor was okay to slurp.

Once you get to "that was my job so I should know" schtick, the thread loses its luster.

Oh come on, Tsa'ah's opinion on which factors should have been included is as good as any epidemiologist's. He worked in the food industry for goodness sake!

Yes Tsa'ah, I would like some fries with that.

[CrystalTears]

I didn't bring it up ... then again you'll have a post that implies I've got to have the last word and can't stop arguing.
At least you admit it.

Learn to read...
And that's all you are able to come up with because I don't agree with you. I think you're taking a study way too fucking seriously just because it didn't reveal every facet of its study to satiate your overweening ego to know about everything. Get the fuck over yourself already.

[Tsa`ah]

At least you admit it.

Rah rah shish coom bah!

The funny thing is that you only like to point it out when you believe it of me ... and not anyone else with pom poms that match yours.

[CrystalTears]

You're right. Because I can't stand you and your egotistical ways. I've been busted. Go you.

[Stanley Burrell]

I don't think this would work too well with yogurt or certain cheeses.

[Clove]

I don't think this would work too well with yogurt or certain cheeses.

Maybe frozen yogurt?

[Stanley Burrell]

Maybe frozen yogurt?

I haven't been to TCBY's in so long, it wouldn't really matter how E. Coli-soaked their yogurts would be.

Excellent point though.