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from the if-I-lick-it,-it-belongs-to-me dept.
Food that has been dropped on the floor is usually safe to eat under the so-called "five-second rule", a scientist has said.
Germ expert Professor Anthony Hilton, from Aston University, said that although retrieving these morsels can never be completely without risk, there is little to be concerned about if the food is only there momentarily.
Professor Hilton will be demonstrating how the five-second rule works at The Big Bang Fair – a celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) for young people – which opens on Wednesday at the NEC in Birmingham.
He said: "Eating food that has spent a few moments on the floor can never be entirely risk-free. Obviously, food covered in visible dirt shouldn't be eaten, but as long as it's not obviously contaminated, the science shows that food is unlikely to have picked up harmful bacteria from a few seconds spent on an indoor floor."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday April 02 2017, @02:14AM (4 children)
I don't know about the validity of TFA, but I'm also not sure of the relevance of your point. People here aren't dropping food and then letting it ferment for "a few days" in ideal growth conditions BEFORE consumption. Instead, presumably most are consuming soon, and only certain toxic bacteria can survive digestion and then grow enough (beginning with low dose) to cause problems.
I guess my point would be that it's probably more likely to get sick from food that was inadvertently placed on a kitchen counter or sink or cutting board or dirty plate or other more reasonable "food surface" than the floor, since many kitchen surfaces can be contaminated with stuff leading to cross-contamination. Personally, unless the floor is filthy, I'd be less worried about that than most actual food prep surfaces in a lot of people's kitchens (where you might actually be growing stuff like in your media dish).
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Sunday April 02 2017, @03:05PM (1 child)
My point is that 10 seconds capture from the air is sufficient to contaminate a sample. And can be provably and repeatably examined. The fermentation is to make it easier to see without a microscope - you could look 1 hour later to see with a microscope....
Dosage is important - most people probably get ill when they get a large dose, hence food storage are strict.
There's contamination many foods, but in general below a certain threshold it will not injure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 02 2017, @04:46PM
So simply breathing for 10 seconds is enough to be contaminated, by that logic ?
Seriously, if you get sick just by eating a fry dropped on the floor for 5 seconds, you should probably have been eliminated by natural selections years ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 02 2017, @04:37PM (1 child)
The deal with this is the the bacteria that cause serious problems usually require time to replicate. If the food was safe prior to being dropped, it's unlikely to pick up anything particularly dangerous just by being dropped on the floor.
Also, most bacteria are just not that dangerous, for every one strain of a type of bacteria that's dangerous there's usually several others that are helpful or at least benign.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 02 2017, @04:46PM
There are too many assumptions being made. What says that you aren't dropping the food right onto a bacteria colony that's been replicating. It's not like all bacteria just sit there waiting for a piece of toast dropping on them before starting to replicate.
I can kind of see the argument about dangerous bacteria making up a minority of the bacteria strains. But I would still want to see some sort of numbers of the types of bacteria on the floor where food is dropped and quantities of each type of bacteria. If you have a dog for instance, I wouldn't want to eat anything off the floor since dogs step in their own crap and then walk around in your house.