Five Second Rule

I'm sure everybody has heard of the 5-second rule. If you drop your food on the ground, you can still pick it up and eat it as long as it has not been on the ground for more than 5 seconds. True ?

Well, 2 American students went and put the rule to the test. The experiment is simple. The students used sliced apples and sweets/chocolates (like M&Ms). They dropped the food on the floor, leave it for a while (and time it of course), picked it up, use a swab to collect samples of the surface that touched the floor and check it under the microscope. Simple ?

The results were surprising. On the apple, it took about 30 seconds for bacteria to start growing and on the chocolate it took nearly a minute. Don't believe me ? See this video news report from ABC here.

Well, I was never a fond believer of the 5-second rule anyway. It has always been the 5-minute rule for me :)

picture taken from Yahoo