Whether you live your life by it or don't believe it at all, there is now an answer regarding what has become widely accepted as the "
5 Second Rule," a notion that supports that food is still clean as long as it has not exceeded five seconds on the ground.
Not true. And now we (or a Loyola expert, rather) can.
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| This is a "No!" |
Infection Today released a report stating:
“A dropped item is immediately contaminated and can’t really be sanitized,”
says Jorge Parada, MD, MPH, FACP, FIDSA, medical director of the infection
prevention and control program at Loyola University Health System. “When it
comes to folklore, the ‘five-second rule’ should be replaced with ‘when in
doubt, throw it out’.”
All items that come into contact with a surface pick up bacteria (and dirt!).
How much bacteria and what kind of microbes depends on the object dropped and
the surface it is dropped upon, he says.
“In the same time period, a rock candy is less likely to pick up
contamination than a slice of cheese. As an extreme example, whether it’s a rock
candy or a slice of cheese, I dion’t think anyone would invoke the five-second
rule if it fell in the toilet,” said the professor at Loyola’s Stritch School of
Medicine. “At the end of the day, this is a polite social fiction we employee to
allow us to eat lightly contaminated foods,” Parada says.
Click to read the
whole article and find out how they address the claim you can improve your immune system through exposure.
