it's a long-held myth that if you drop
anything on the floor and you pick it up
within five seconds it's safe to eat you
won't get sick or have any bacterial
contamination on the food as long as you
pick it up fast enough well of course
that's ridiculous and a researcher from
Rutgers decided to spend some of his
time and resources on this issue to
study whether or not it's true and the
findings are actually a little
fascinating so we'll get to that
the professor Daniel Donald Schaefer a
food microbiologist at Rutgers
University in New Jersey said a two-year
study he led concluded that no matter
how fast you pick up food that falls on
the floor you will pick up bacteria with
it okay
but what's interesting is you know a
similar study came out a few years ago
that essentially had the same end result
but this study looked at multiple
surfaces and also used different times
to see how much bacteria the piece of
food would pick up okay so they tested
four surfaces stainless steel ceramic
tile wood and carpet and four different
foods cut watermelon bread buttered
bread and strawberry gummy candy they
were dropped from a height of 5 inches
on two surfaces treated with a bacterium
with characteristics similar to
Salmonella now the researchers tested
four contact times less than one second
and 530 and 300 seconds a total of 128
possible combinations of surface food
and seconds were replicated 20 times
each you yielding 2,560 measurements
okay
I love how thorough this it's so
thorough I mean he spent two years doing
this it's amazing okay so right here's
what they found bacteria can contaminate
instantaneously yes however however
carpet had a very low rate of
transmission of bacteria compared with
stainless steel transfer rates varied
when it came to wood okay yeah so first
of all I'd like to now say oh of course
so I remember when people would tell me
the the five-second rule oh no it's okay
you could pick it up and everything is
fine and I'm like not buying it in
they'd say
please believe me and I'm like no I
don't believe you because it makes no
logical sense
yeah bacteria aren't like one one
thousand two one thousand if it's on
there it's on there they're not like
time out time out we're gonna have the
five Mississippi rule here before we go
on to this thing yeah yeah and so and
then the second part of it is also
fairly clear if you drop it on a carpet
you're not getting the whole surface
yeah it's when you get on this horse
right and stainless steel you getting
the whole surface wood there's cracks
and stuff so it's not quite as bad as
the stainless steel things in the world
study just to prove it and also in terms
of food which food I mean this is common
sense as well I'm sure you guys can
guess thank you food is gonna get more
of course the piece of watermelon
grab the most amount of bacteria the
gummy candy had the lowest rate of
contamination yeah yeah because this is
liquid a little bit more and it gets
into the but anyway right you're right I
love it one I love science yeah and two
now for all the people who've been
making that absurd argument for all
these years and they they say says who
well you can tell a professor donald
shafter at rutgers university that's who
so would you would you eat food if it's
all on the floor yes it's definitely
okay so here's another thing that they
not these researchers but there was
another study that looked into men
versus women and which gender is more
likely to pick up and heat food from the
ground after its fall of course it's
always men of course it's men because
we're barbarians we're Visigoths
no it totally depends if I drop
something on a sidewalk on Venice I'm
not picking that up okay but if it's in
my house and it fell on the rug for like
two seconds and I blow on it but it'll
be fine that's not as bad men are also
likely to pick up the piece of food from
the ground see that it has you know hair
or some other thing on it dust it off
and then
still eat it yeah that's customer men
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