US Food Safety Blog

by: Chris Richardson, Merrimack College intern for US Food Safety Corporation  

When it comes to food safety, remember that it is not limited to recalls and consumer goods—food contamination happens everyday, within our own homes and schools.

Here’s a great example. How many people do you know that use the good ol’ “five second rule?” I have seen all ages of people using this rule when they drop food on the floor. The biggest users, however, are probably college students. Whenever any of my friends at Merrimack College are eating in their dorms or the dining hall, this rule is absolute if they drop food. I have always questioned this rule though. How can such a simple rule really protect against fallen food from getting dirty and unhealthy? Sometimes there is even VISIBLE dirt on the food when people pick it up after just ONE second! I had remembered seeing the five second rule on the popular Discovery Channel show, MythBusters, but I decided to do some research of my own.

In a recent New York Times article by Harold McGee called, “The Five-Second Rule Explored, or How Dirty Is That Bologna?” I found some interesting facts.

McGee says that “Microbes are everywhere around us, not just on floors. They thrive in wet kitchen sponges and end up on freshly wiped countertops.” If harmful germs are even on cleaned countertops, imagine what kind of germs are on the floor of a dirty dorm room.

So, we know that food definitely picks up some bacteria when it hits the floor, but is there enough to make you sick after five seconds? Some scientists at Clemson University put this to the test. First, they treated carpet, tile, and wood floors with salmonella bacteria (the same kind found in the Peanut recall). Next, they let it sit for a full day, and tried the five second rule with pieces of bread and bologna.

They found that “slices of bread and bologna left for five seconds took up from 150 to 8,000 bacteria.” When they left it for a minute, the numbers of bacteria grew ten times larger. So what they found is that picking up the food quickly does limit the amount of bacteria that gets on the food. However, the food can pick up enough bacteria in five seconds to make you sick! “The infectious dose, the smallest number of bacteria that can actually cause illness, is as few as 10 for some salmonellas, fewer than 100 for the deadly strain of E. coli.” No wonder why college kids get sick a lot while they are at school! The five second rule is a lot less safe than we think.

Anyone for a fun-filled game of Bacteria Pong?

But say you’re a college student that knows the dirty truth about the five second rule. Your education has made you too smart to use such a ridiculous rule. I would be willing to bet that you have played a game or two of beer pong before though, right? It is almost a rite of passage for college-aged kids, and even young party-goers that have graduated continue to play. How could beer pong ever have anything to do with food safety?

Remember where you chased that ping pong ball the other day? Underneath the refrigerator? Into the bathroom? Then your friend threw it into a solo cup filled with beer and you drank it? Bacteria must taste better when you’re drunk.

A couple of years ago, two biology students at George Washington University decided to find out just how unhealthy beer pong may be. For a class project, they did bacteria testing and published an article with their findings in the school newspaper. After they played a 3-hour game of beer pong using brand new balls and a 30-pack of beer, they let the bacteria settle and collected swabs for testing.

Results showed that “from one night’s worth of playing the typical college drinking game, they found high levels of a bacterial family that contains such species as E. coli, pneumonia and salmonella.” Most of these bacteria would result in “flu-like symptoms such as vomiting, nausea, diarrhea and possibly fever that could keep you in bed for days.” They found that the water cup, used to clean off the ball, contained the most bacteria. In addition, they didn’t even mention the possibility of catching mononucleosis from sharing cups with other people.

Although it is only a matter of chance whether these bacteria affect you, depending on the strength of your immune system and other factors, there is definitely a possibility of getting pretty sick. So, this weekend when you play your next game of beer pong and don’t feel good the next few days, you will know why.