The 'five-second rule'

A light hearted post this week which loosely relates to health! Have you ever asked yourself is the 'five-second rule' really true? Surely it can't be true...

For those of you that don't know the theory is this: any food that is dropped on the floor is safe to eat as long as it is picked up within five-seconds.

Three specimens were collected, each was then imprinted individually on a culture plate and then incubated for several days.

The results were as follows;

1.) Pizza dropped on the kitchen floor - culture plate covered in bacteria, even some fecal bacteria present.

2.) Apple dropped on the street - Again lots of bacteria present on the culture plate.

3.) Buttered toast dropped on the carpet - Most bacteria of all the specimens!

Furthermore similar results were also recorded for food that touched surfaces for effectively zero seconds.

The conclusion of the experiment as you may have expected was this, (regardless of how long you drop it for) 'if you drop it, chuck it!'

A short video clip, which includes images of the bacteria samples can be found here.