Many of us have at one point or another used the “Five Second Rule” and those few of us who (not including myself) have not used it have at least heard of it. So, for anyone who may be in the dark pertaining to this rule; the Five Second Rule states that if a piece of food should fall on the floor, then if you can retrieve it within five seconds, the food is still good to eat. With this rule in mind, it is an apt time to point out that not all 5 seconds are truly created equal.
First I need to address an issue that I have heard, but is completely ridiculous. Is there a considerable difference between “a short five seconds” and “a long five seconds”? No. Five seconds is in fact… five seconds. You could refer to it as one second that has passed five times, or perhaps a mere one twelfth of a minute. If you’re truly ambitious then we are actually working with one seven hundred and twentieth of an hour (I could keep going but I think my point has been proven). Now, if we look at this final unit of time it might appear to be “short” but as we just saw it is in fact the SAME time span as our original five seconds.
So, instead let us consider what aspects or characteristics might lead us to create exceptions to the Five Second Rule. To some extent, each of the ideas I’ll present are related, but I will treat them all individually. The first exception is location – that is – where are you that you are considering to employ the Five Second Rule (to now be abbreviated as the FSR). The easy examples might be dropping food on a dining table surface, or a kitchen counter, etc. These are clean surfaces that we clean and cook on and it’s intuitive to pick up food to eat off of them. On these the FSR barely even applies.
The next iteration of location is I think where the FSR was designed to be used. A clean non-carpeted floor that you own (your house’s hardwood floor?), a well-kept grass field, etc. In these conditions we might be able to agree that immediate impact with the surface might not ruin our food, but we’d ideally not want to let it linger their too long. This however is a fine line between an appearingly-clean floor in a public area or a patch of dirt and leaves in the midst of the wilderness. At this point we begin to tailor the FSR down to a zero second rule, and often times consider whatever it is we had been at one time considering a lost cause.
But location is not the lone factor that we have to account for. It is also important to consider what type of food you have. For example, if you are eating a liquid – soup for example – the FSR is right out! You spill your soup on the floor, I don’t care where you are, you’re done with that. On the other hand, we can consider hard, smooth solid foods, such as an apple. An apple can be dropped even on a patch of dirt and might sit there for close to a minute without anyone noticing. A quick brush with the sleeve and it’s good to go! Have you bitten the apple – now maybe we at least have a consideration, but I’d wager it’s still good. Similarly, sticky foods tend to reduce the five seconds again down to a 0-1 second. Chewing gum – lollipops – barring them landing on a super clean and smooth counter-like surface is never going to be picked up.
Another important aspect of the rule is “what kind of motivation are we working on?” The first and most likely form of motivation is hunger. Have you eaten breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? Today? This week? This scale is I think pretty obvious and has a direct relation to the possible duration of the FSR. This could perhaps be modeled by (Allowed Floor Time (s)) = (2 Seconds/meal)(# missed meals) + (5 seconds). Note: I have collected no data to determine this model, but am proposing it as a theory. However, I think it is clear that the hungrier we are, the less picky we become about the location in which we find our food.
So now one might ask what other motivations might exist? Was there a dare? Is it a competition? Are money or fame on the line? If so, anything could happen and we are now outside the bounds of what the FSR covers. At this point, there is even the possibility to eat something that we KNOW to be no good just to prove a point or gross out a friend. At this point we all accept it as a violation of the FSR – not an exception.
There still lingers the occasional extreme though. More than once I’ve been with a friend or acquaintance as we’ve passed a restaurant – and we were hungry…granted – and there was leftover food that had not yet been cleaned up. I have never done this, and I have never endorsed this, but twice I have seen said friend/acquaintance relieve the leftover dishes of their food. While I frowned at the maneuver, reports both times were that it was total worth it.
So, in conclusion I do not presume to have listed a comprehensive list of exceptions to the FSR. However, the rule cannot be adjusted for a “short” or “long” five seconds. Five seconds is always the same amount of time. The question regarding food is not about the length of 5 seconds under consideration, but rather what considerations allow us to adjust the time restriction OF five seconds. Consider where you are, what you’re eating… are there outside considerations like hunger? I’ve spent plenty of time in the woods and justified eating something not necessarily “clean” with the FSR. However, I feel it is important to understand what to consider when using the rule as justification.
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