"five second rule" news and stories

Everyone's done it: A coveted cookie or piece of sandwich falls to the ground and you quickly grab it up off the floor, brush if off and shrug -- "five-second rule." The idea that no germs accumulate before five seconds might sound plausible (anything to get that cookie back, after all) but the folks at YumSugar wanted to know: Is it true?

Find out whether the five-second rule is fact or fiction at YumSugar.com.

Gazpacho. Photo: Emily Farris, Fifty Bucks a Week.

Each week, we round up the top food articles we've spied Web-wide. This week, a special edition of our own bloggers' primo pieces from elsewhere on the Web.

Pervaiz Shallwani boards a bus with a stripper pole alongside a bunch of bartenders to harvest rye in upstate New York ... for Gourmet ... really.

"Mad Men" fiend Eric Diesel reveals his recipe for perfectly "clean" martinis -- a 2-to-1 gin-to-vermouth concoction at his Urban Home blog.

Mike Pomranz on the phenomenon of a cat opening a jar of food at Comedy Central.

Bruce Watson reports at sister site DailyFinance that the United States may "run out of sugar" in the next year!

Cook and film buff Monika Bartyzel notes that Michael Moore might be done with the documentary style that made him famous, for Cinematical.

Gretchen Roberts, our savvy sommelier-in-training, offers freebie gourmet treats at her wine blog Vinobite.

CoffeeMeister Erin Meister makes peace with the five-second-rule over at her culinary blog, the Nervous Cook.

Joshua M. Bernstein visits Scores, a Manhattan strip club, to eat steak (again, really!) for the New York Press.

Emily Farris tries to toe the budget line with a basic, beautiful gazpacho at Fifty Bucks a Week.

That's according to Mehmet Oz, the doctor who always appears on Oprah in his scrubs, talking about colons, and Joel Harper, in this quick Q and A at Esquire.com.

Oz and Harper (a personal trainer) answer several questions about food, health, and exercise. Besides declaring blueberries the healthiest fruit, they also say that the only good thing about pizza is the sauce, that colon cleansing isn't really worth it, and that a little alcohol isn't bad for us at all. They also answer the question on whether it's ok to eat something that has fallen on the floor as long as we pick it up within five seconds.

As for the pizza advice, I think there's another good thing that they're forgetting: pizza is totally awesome!

One of the most popular and long-lived old wives' tales is known as the "5-second rule". The "rule" stipulates that food that has fallen on the floor is still safe to eat if you pick it up within five seconds of it hitting the ground. It has been around for many, many years, propagating itself on school playgrounds across the country and possibly even the world. Variations exist, shortening the rule to 3 seconds or expanding it to 10, but the basic theory remains. Unfortunately, it isn't true, as the Sacramento Bee's Lisa Heyamoto found out.

While some people, from 3 to 93, will continue to believe in the truth of this tale, the reality is that most surfaces are covered with germs and bacteria and floors are no exception. Drier foods, like cookies or a bagel, are less likely to pick up unsavory particles than wetter foods, like meat and cheese. Of course, we are all coming into contact with bacteria every day, whether we're cleaning our counter with a kitchen sponge (bacteria breeding ground) or giving our pets a pat. There is very little that can be done to avoid all contact. Ms. Heyamoto reminds us not to believe that we're "safe" when we follow the rule, but that your comfort level with what your food comes into contact with is subjective. The kitchen floor? Sure. The sidewalk outside your office? Perhaps not.

You can't go wrong following the other food rule: "When in doubt, throw it out!"

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