Food that has fallen "hasn't been 5 minutes", is it really safe to eat? & bull; hello healthy

We've all done it before - drop food on the floor, rush to pick it up, wipe a little here and there, then continue eating. While some people very emphatically refuse to put any food that has fallen on the floor, no matter how long.

Most Indonesian people must be familiar with the principle of "as long as it is not yet five minutes, it is still okay to eat". This “not five minutes” myth holds that if a piece of food only spends a few seconds on the floor, dirt and germs don't have enough time to contaminate that food.

Where did the “not five minutes” principle begin?

Jillian Clarke, an intern in the microbiology laboratory at the University of Illinois, was the first to investigate this urban myth scientifically in 2003. Clarke and her team of researchers implanted a colony of E. coli bacteria - which causes stomach aches, diarrhea, and vomiting - in two media type: rough and smooth tile. Then, he places a jelly candy and cookie on both types of tiles for five seconds. As a result, E. coli bacteria move from the smooth floor to the food within five seconds, even faster on the type of smooth tile surface.

However, what this research does not take into account is that the laboratory floor is indeed very clean and sterile - like other laboratories in general - and it is not carried out on wet floors, carpets, or using other types of food, such as chewing gum or ice cream. Clarke argues that the dry floor conditions make it impossible for many pathogens, such as salmonella, listeria, or E.coli to live, because bacteria need moisture to reproduce.

Food that fell on the tile floor and that fell onto the carpet

Reporting from The Guardian, a 2007 study by Paul Dawson, a food technology professor at Clemson University, found that floor dirtiness was a more important factor than how long a piece of food sat on the floor. Using a slice of bread and a slice of bacon, he shows that it is better to drop food on carpeted floors - which are already planted with salmonella colonies - where there is less than 1% bacterial contamination, than on tile or wooden floors, which shows 70 % bacterial contamination of food.

Another study from Aston University, quoted from CNN, found that, as soon as food hits the surface of the floor, the food is immediately contaminated - especially on a smooth surface - but the number of bacteria in food will increase tenfold after 3-30 seconds sitting on the floor. floor.

Ronald Cutler, professor of microbiology at the University of London, told the NHS, argues that the principle of "not yet five minutes" has little impact on the number of bacteria in your food from heavily contaminated floor surfaces. According to the results of his research, every food tested - on various types of surfaces with different types of bacterial colonies and for different durations - was equally contaminated. He further suggested, no matter the floor or the carpet, once the food falls off, you should just throw it away.

So, is it okay to eat food that has fallen "not yet five minutes"?

From a food safety point of view, if you have millions of microorganism cells on a surface, 0.1% is enough to make you sick. In addition, some types of bacteria are very virulent, and only a tiny fraction of it can make you sick. For example, 10 cells or less from certain E. coli species can cause serious illness and death in people with weakened immune systems.

However, bacteria are everywhere, even when you sweep and mop the floors clean. Germs and bacteria do not just stick to the ground to wait for the opportunity to land on the fallen food, which is the opposite of what people believe so far. At any one time, there are more than nine thousand microorganisms of different species hiding in every dust in our homes, including 7,000 different types of bacteria, reported the BBC. Most of them are benign.

Germs and bacteria are all over us too, all the time. Humans continuously shed bacteria through dead skin and the air we breathe. Researchers have even found that the average human produces about 38 million bacterial cells into the environment every hour.

If you are among the unlucky ones to have a floor filled with a colony of malignant bacteria, chances are that these bacteria are also found on the walls or door handles of your house. One study published in 2006 found that there was a lesser risk of exposure to salmonella in five seconds than one minute, but that the risk was still there. Although in fact it is very unlikely that these malignant bacteria will stick to common household surfaces.

In other words, when you consider picking up food that has fallen on the grounds "as long as it hasn't been five minutes", just take it. However, young children and the elderly are not recommended to follow this principle, because their body's immune system may not be able to protect them from even the slightest exposure to bacteria.

If the floor surface is very dirty, or you are not sure, then this principle may not apply on the basis of the instincts of disgust and dirtiness. However, your chances of getting sick from eating food that has fallen on the floor are classified as very small.

You can still catch bacterial disease at any time and in any way, regardless of whether you eat food that has just been picked up from the floor. There is no magic barrier between your body and the world of bacteria, so even strict personal hygiene will not guarantee that you are free from bacteria.

What is important to remember is that diseases caused by bacterial contamination can be avoided by maintaining personal hygiene, for example, diligently washing hands, cleaning the house, and preparing and cooking food well.