Do you follow the five-second rule - the guideline that says it's okay to eat food from the floor if you pick it up right away? You may have also read or heard about the study debunking the five-second rule. It said that no matter how fast you pick up food that falls on the floor, you will pick up bacteria with it.
What should we do then? Let's hear the advice of a doctor, who seems to have a different approach to the question.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/upshot...
Yes, you can, according to Aaron E Carroll, Indiana University's Professor of Pediatrics, who says he eats food that's been on the floor - rejecting the advice of a recent study that suggests food dropped on the floor will pick up any bacteria in just one second, rather than five.
He says there are far dirtier places in a typical house than the floor - such as the handle of a fridge, the kitchen sink and the kitchen counter, highlighting several studies that back up his claims.
Dr. Carroll says: "People react to news like this in one of two ways."
"One is to become paranoid about everything...The alternative is to realize that for most of us, our immune systems are pretty hardy. "
"We've all been touching this dirty stuff for a long time, without knowing it, and doing just fine."
In 1998, he and a team of researchers ran tests to see how dirty common household surfaces and items were.
While the kitchen floor harbored, on average, about three colonies of coliform bacteria, the fridge handle had just over five colonies per square inch, while the kitchen counter had even more at 5.75 colonies per square inch.
But still, don't be like Joey!
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