The coolest: Five-second rule validated!

Admit it, you know the five-second rule. It comes into play when you've dropped food on the floor, but aren't quite ready to part with the possibility of still consuming it. My wife believes in the zero-second rule, but I'm a firm-believer in the old wives' tale.


Now, it would seem, there's some science to back up the five-second rule. A pair of biology majors at Connecticut College have gone and tested the rule, and there's good news. It should now be called the thirty-second rule:

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.

Previous research claimed to have debunked the five-second rule. But their methods were questionable. The researchers dropped food on tiles that were purposefully contaminated with E. coli bacteria. Let me tell you, if you have E. coli bacteria on your kitchen floor you've got bigger problems than the five-second rule.

My advice? If you keep your home reasonably clean the five-second rule is reasonably valid.