When I was growing up if food hit the ground, my mother just said, “You can eat that.”

When I was in college, back in the 70s, my engineer not-quiet-yet-husband first told me there was an actual rule about eating food that fell on the floor. He told me food was safe to be picked up from the floor and eaten a full SIX seconds after it fell!

I know other people who actually believe that food is safe up to a whole TEN seconds after it falls!

And now today I have learned that the five-second rule has, in fact, been scientifically proven. I read it first in Kevin Cowherd’s column in the Baltimore Sun today. I checked it out on The Connecticut College website where they reported that two smart women, Molly Goettsche and Nicole Moin, both cellular and molecular biology majors, took it upon themselves to prove the rule using apples (who would eat them after they fall on the floor), Skittles (which everyone knows actually DO last for ever) and agar plates (that’s real science!)

The results prove, Goettsche and Moin said, that you can wait at least 30 seconds to pick up wet foods and more than a minute to pick up dry foods before they become contaminated with bacteria.

They’ll be great mothers one day, I feel certain.

Whoever says that engineers and geeks don’t have a sense of humor is just nuts!