The 5 second rule for the win!

Since having children I have completely changed my stance on eating food that has been dropped on the ground.

This recent article seems to offer hope that eventually the scientific method may prove the validity of the 5 second rule.

"For the study, Anthony Hilton, a professor of Microbiology, and his students considered a variety of foods – toast, pasta, cookie, and a sticky candy – to see how much bacteria (E. coli and Staphylococcus) they attracted when allowed contact with the floor. They allowed the food to lie on various types of flooring – carpet, laminate, and tiles – for 3 seconds to 30 seconds.

Not surprisingly, the longer the food was allowed commune with the floor, the more bacteria it accumulated. And the surfaces differed in how likely they were to transfer the bacteria, with carpeting being the least likely, and tiled surfaces and laminate the most likely. “We have found evidence that transfer from indoor flooring surfaces is incredibly poor with carpet actually posing the lowest risk of bacterial transfer onto dropped food,” said Hilton in a news release."

Next, I want someone to check out just how unhealthy it is for my 4 year old to eat goldfish he finds in the creases of his carseat that have been there for a minimum of one day but on some occasions may have been there for much much longer...

Here is the handy cheat-sheat included in the Forbes article: