What is the rule when you drop your food on the floor? Information for teens

in #steemiteducation6 years ago (edited)

You are eating the last piece of your pizza and it drops out of your hand onto the floor.  Noooooooooooo........  Your friends shout '5 second rule'.  You pick it up quickly and stuff it in your mouth.

If you pick it up within 5 seconds there are no germs on it.  Right?  Or not?

The five-second rule, sometimes also the three-second rule, is a western cultural food hygiene concept, that states that there is a defined window where it is permissible to pick up food (or sometimes cutlery) after it has been dropped and thus exposed to contamination.  

You can read more about this rule here.

        

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I am sorry to burst your bubble but this believe was tested by some scientist and they have proof that this is only a myth.  Bacteria can get onto your food, the moment you drop it, so even if you have hands as fast as 'Flash Gordon', you can still get sick from eating food off the floor.

It will obviously all depend on the area where you dropped your food.  Most of the time when it is dropped in your kitchen (which is hopefully clean) it will not really do damage and even if you ingest some bacteria (which will be there), if your immune system is working well, your body will be able to fight them off.  But this can go the other way as well.

If you have dropped your food, remember the following.  Even floors that look clean can have a lot of germ floating around on it.  Even if the floor was just cleaned, remember that the floor is only as clean as the mop that was used allowed.  So even if you use a new cloth or mop every day to wash the floor, it can still be the 'play pen' of many bacteria.

The more moist a piece of food is, the more bacteria it will pick up in a short time.  If you drop a piece of fruit on the floor, it will gather germs quicker than a piece of toast.  

A lot of bacteria are not harmful to humans, but there are some that can leave you with annoying things like diarrhea (and who wants that?).  It is no indication that if you cannot physically see something on your food that it is not contaminated.  Bacteria are too small to spot with the naked eye and you can definitely not tell what type they are and if it will make you sick or not.

So what to do?  If you do drop your food, just write it off as bad luck and give it to the dog or throw it in the bin.  That is the safest choice.  (You do not know what happened on that specific spot when you were not watching... for all you know, the dog or the cat were sitting there on their butts hahaha)

Now I am sure you are all sitting there going 'O I will never eat something off the floor'.  

You lie... we have all done it and some still do it so I guess the question will be 'Do you feel lucky or not?  Are you taking the chance or not and is that piece of food really so important that you will risk the chance of getting sick?'

Just sometimes (especially if it is the last piece of your favourite food) the answer to all those questions are YES....

                                             

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a very qualified and useful exposure

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