{"id":396,"date":"2007-05-10T09:49:06","date_gmt":"2007-05-10T14:49:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/?p=396"},"modified":"2007-05-10T09:49:06","modified_gmt":"2007-05-10T14:49:06","slug":"The 5-second rule... some seriously good research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/?p=396","title":{"rendered":"The 5-second rule&#8230; some seriously good research"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Now this is applicable research for a mother: from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/05\/09\/dining\/09curi.html?ex=1179374400&amp;en=5390d03968cf91e0&amp;ei=5070&amp;emc=eta1\" target=\"_blank\">New York Times<\/a>&#8230;  <\/p>\n<table width=\"844\" height=\"1201\" cellspacing=\"5\" cellpadding=\"5\" border=\"1\" align=\"center\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 100%;\">\n<h1>\n<nyt_headline type=\" \" version=\"1.0\"><br \/>\nThe Five-Second Rule Explored, or How Dirty Is That Bologna?<br \/>\n<\/nyt_headline><br \/>\n<\/h1>\n<p><script type=\"text\/JavaScript\" language=\"JavaScript\">function getSharePasskey() { return 'ex=1336449600&en=706e4f0cec07d005&ei=5124';}<\/script><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/JavaScript\" language=\"JavaScript\">\nfunction getShareURL() {\n\treturn encodeURIComponent('http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/05\/09\/dining\/09curi.html');\n}\nfunction getShareHeadline() {\n\treturn encodeURIComponent('The Five-Second Rule Explored, or How Dirty Is That Bologna?');\n}\nfunction getShareDescription() {\n\treturn encodeURIComponent('Is it safe to eat a piece of food that fell to the floor but was picked up in less that five seconds? Scientists recently put the five-second rule through some microbiology paces. ');\n}\nfunction getShareKeywords() {\n\treturn encodeURIComponent('Food Contamination and Poisoning,Food');\n}\nfunction getShareSection() {\n\treturn encodeURIComponent('dining');\n}\nfunction getShareSectionDisplay() {<\/p>\n<p>\treturn encodeURIComponent('The Curious Cook');\n}\nfunction getShareSubSection() {\n\treturn encodeURIComponent('');\n}\nfunction getShareByline() {\n\treturn encodeURIComponent('By HAROLD McGEE');\n}\nfunction getSharePubdate() {\n\treturn encodeURIComponent('May 9, 2007');\u00a0\n<\/script><\/p>\n<p><nyt_byline type=\" \" version=\"1.0\"><br \/>\n<\/nyt_byline><\/p>\n<div class=\"byline\">By HAROLD McGEE<\/div>\n<div class=\"timestamp\">Published: May 9, 2007<\/div>\n<p><!--NYT_INLINE_IMAGE_POSITION1 --><\/p>\n<p><nyt_text><\/p>\n<p>\t <\/nyt_text><\/p>\n<p>A COUPLE of weeks ago I saw a new scientific paper from <a title=\"More articles about Clemson University\" href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/organizations\/c\/clemson_university\/index.html?inline=nyt-org\">Clemson University<\/a> that struck me as both pioneering and hilarious.<\/p>\n<p><a name=\"secondParagraph\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Accompanied by six graphs,<br \/>\ntwo tables and equations whose terms include \u201cbologna\u201d and \u201ccarpet,\u201d<br \/>\nit\u2019s a thorough microbiological study of the five-second rule: the idea<br \/>\nthat if you pick up a dropped piece of food before you can count to<br \/>\nfive, it\u2019s O.K. to eat it. <\/p>\n<p>I first heard about the rule from my<br \/>\nthen-young children and thought it was just a way of having fun at<br \/>\nsnack time and lunch. My daughter now tells me that fun was part of it,<br \/>\nbut they knew they were playing with \u201cgerms.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re reminded<br \/>\nabout germs on food whenever there\u2019s an outbreak of E. coli or<br \/>\nsalmonella, and whenever we read the labels on packages of uncooked<br \/>\nmeat. But we don\u2019t have much occasion to think about the everyday<br \/>\npractice of retrieving and eating dropped pieces of food. <\/p>\n<p>Microbes<br \/>\nare everywhere around us, not just on floors. They thrive in wet<br \/>\nkitchen sponges and end up on freshly wiped countertops. <\/p>\n<p>As I<br \/>\nwrite this column, on an airplane, I realize that I have removed a<br \/>\nchicken sandwich from its protective plastic sleeve and put it down<br \/>\nrepeatedly on the sleeve\u2019s outer surface, which was meant to protect<br \/>\nthe sandwich by blocking microbes. What\u2019s on the outer surface? Without<br \/>\nthe five-second rule on my mind I wouldn\u2019t have thought to wonder.<\/p>\n<p>I learned from the Clemson study that the true pioneer of five-second research was Jillian Clarke, a high-school intern at the <a title=\"More articles about University of Illinois\" href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/organizations\/u\/university_of_illinois\/index.html?inline=nyt-org\">University of Illinois<\/a><br \/>\nin 2003. Ms. Clarke conducted a survey and found that slightly more<br \/>\nthan half of the men and 70 percent of the women knew of the<br \/>\nfive-second rule, and many said they followed it. <\/p>\n<p>She did an<br \/>\nexperiment by contaminating ceramic tiles with E. coli, placing gummy<br \/>\nbears and cookies on the tiles for the statutory five seconds, and then<br \/>\nanalyzing the foods. They had become contaminated with bacteria. <\/p>\n<p>For<br \/>\nperforming this first test of the five-second rule, Ms. Clarke was<br \/>\nrecognized by the Annals of Improbable Research with the 2004 Ig Nobel<br \/>\nPrize in public health.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not surprising that food dropped<br \/>\nonto bacteria would collect some bacteria. But how many? Does it<br \/>\ncollect more as the seconds tick by? Enough to make you sick? <\/p>\n<p>Prof. Paul L. Dawson and his colleagues at Clemson  have now put some numbers on floor-to-food contamination.<\/p>\n<p>Their<br \/>\nbacterium of choice was salmonella; the test surfaces were tile, wood<br \/>\nflooring and nylon carpet; and the test foods were slices of bread and<br \/>\nbologna. <\/p>\n<p>First the researchers measured how long bacteria could<br \/>\nsurvive on the surfaces. They applied salmonella broth in doses of<br \/>\nseveral million bacteria per square centimeter, a number typical of<br \/>\nbadly contaminated food.<\/p>\n<p>I had thought that most bacteria were<br \/>\nsensitive to drying out, but after 24 hours of exposure to the air,<br \/>\nthousands of bacteria per square centimeter had survived on the tile<br \/>\nand wood, and tens of thousands on the carpet. Hundreds of salmonella<br \/>\nwere still alive after 28 days.<\/p>\n<p>Professor Dawson and colleagues<br \/>\nthen placed test food slices onto salmonella-painted surfaces for<br \/>\nvarying lengths of time, and counted how many live bacteria were<br \/>\ntransferred to the food. <\/p>\n<p>On surfaces that had been contaminated<br \/>\neight hours earlier, slices of bologna and bread left for five seconds<br \/>\ntook up from 150 to 8,000 bacteria. Left for a full minute, slices<br \/>\ncollected about 10 times more than that from the tile and carpet,<br \/>\nthough a lower number from the wood.<\/p>\n<p>What do these numbers tell<br \/>\nus about the five-second rule? Quick retrieval does mean fewer<br \/>\nbacteria, but it\u2019s no guarantee of safety. True, Jillian Clarke found<br \/>\nthat the number of bacteria on the floor at the University of Illinois<br \/>\nwas so low it couldn\u2019t be measured, and the Clemson researchers<br \/>\nresorted to extremely high contamination levels for their tests. But<br \/>\neven if a floor \u2014 or a countertop, or wrapper \u2014 carried only a<br \/>\nthousandth the number of bacteria applied by the researchers, the piece<br \/>\nof food would be likely to pick up several bacteria. <\/p>\n<p>The<br \/>\ninfectious dose, the smallest number of bacteria that can actually<br \/>\ncause illness, is as few as 10 for some salmonellas, fewer than 100 for<br \/>\nthe deadly strain of E. coli.<\/p>\n<p>Of course we can never know for<br \/>\nsure how many harmful microbes there are on any surface. But we know<br \/>\nenough now to formulate the five-second rule, version 2.0: If you drop<br \/>\na piece of food, pick it up quickly, take five seconds to recall that<br \/>\njust a few bacteria can make you sick, then take a few more to think<br \/>\nabout where you dropped it and whether or not it\u2019s worth eating.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Now this is applicable research for a mother: from the New York Times&#8230; 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. Accompanied by six [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkzLf-6o","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}