Five Second Rule

Did this ever happen to you? It happened to me. You drop some food you’re eating to the floor, look around to see if anybody noticed. Depending on the circumstances – like, say, the floor isn’t completely dirty and it isn’t a spoonful of jello – you mumble to yourself, “five second rule,” and then pick it up and eat it.
For those of you who may be more cultured than I and may therefore not know what I’m talking about, “The Five Second Rule” states that if you drop something edible on the ground and then pick it up before five seconds are up, it’s still safe to eat. Its origins – and I’m not making this up -- date back to the Genghis Khan. Turns out his time scale was something more than our customary five seconds: it was actually more like 18-24 hours. Those Mongols must have built up some monster antibodies to be able to deal with exposure like that.
Contrary to clearly stated opinions by members of my own family as they’ve seen me and my sons eating dropped food -- there seems to be generally a question on the matter. A question important enough to be worth research grants resulting in peer reviewed papers, no less.
God Bless America and here are your tax dollars hard at work: there really is research on the matter. Using government funding and an environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM), students at Clemson University and the University of Illinois have tested the question of once dropped, how long does it really take for an item of food to become too disgusting to pickup and eat?
The answer? “It depends”…on the kind of food and the state of the floor. Turns out that dry floors are surprisingly clean; especially in high traffic areas.
So if the food is hard like candy, and the floor “clean and dry,” you can go more than the customary five seconds. A donut, sandwich, or whole fruit: no problem. On the other hand, you drop cheese: forget it. If you drop bologna: also forget it...unless you’ve dropped it on carpet, in which case – and again, I’m not making this up -- you can go as long as a minute.
Okay...I gotta get back to work...