Good Food
Dissecting the Five Second Rule
You drop a tasty cookie on the floor. Shouting, "Five seconds!" you frantically pick it up, blow on it and pop it in your mouth –- with the notion that if something touches the floor for less than five seconds, it's still clean and safe to eat.
By Evan Kleiman • • 1 min readYou drop a tasty cookie on the floor. Shouting, "Five seconds!" you frantically pick it up, blow on it and pop it in your mouth –- with the notion that if something touches the floor for less than five seconds, it's still clean and safe to eat. Noted food scientist
Harold McGee, author of
On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen
and
The Curious Cook: More Kitchen Science and Lore, tested the "five second" rule and wrote about his findings in the
New York Times. Want to discover more kitchen science? Check out
