NEW STUDY BURIES FIVE-SECOND DROPPED-FOOD RULE

IServes 4-6 200g baby spinach 250g strawberries,

washed and halved 1 avocado, peeled and sliced 100g feta, cut in cubes 125ml grated Parmesan,

for Parmesan crisps

PICKLED ONIONS

1 red onion, sliced 30ml rice vinegar 15ml sugar 2ml salt

DRESSING

60ml olive oil 30ml balsamic vinegar 15ml honey salt and pepper Arrange the spinach on a serving platter, scatter over the strawberries, avo and feta. Refrigerate until needed.

Place spoonfuls of Parmesan on a lined baking tray and bake at 180°c for 10 minutes or until lightly golden brown.

Remove and set aside to cool on the tray. MAGINE it’s lunch. You’re holding a fat slice of watermelon. You move in for a bite. But the fruit slips from your juice-slicked fingers and tumbles to the floor.

You shrug, scooping up the slice. Maybe you make a half-hearted attempt to brush it clean. Maybe you even invoke that childhood decree – the five-second rule – as you sink your teeth into its melon flesh.

If you’re unfamiliar with the rule, it’s this: if you drop food to the ground, you have a five-second window to pick it up and it will remain clean enough to eat. But this rule doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, says a new study published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

“The five-second rule is a significant oversimplification

Meanwhile make the pickled onions.

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and set aside for 30 minutes.

When ready, sprinkle the pickled onions over the salad and drizzle with dressing.

Lastly, add the Parmesan crisps and serve.

DRESSING:

Combine all the ingredients and whisk well. of what actually happens when bacteria transfer from a surface to food,” Professor Donald Schaffner, a Rutgers University biologist and an author of the research, said in a statement. “Bacteria can contaminate instantaneously.”

We know it doesn’t make sense, but the five-second rule sticks anyway. It’s the fulcrum on which we balance our aversion to spoilt grub with our desire to devour it, microbes be damned.

Though the origins of the fivesecond rule are murky, it is possible the tension it represents has always

DOUGH

4X250ml flour 10g sachet of instant yeast 15ml sugar 10ml salt 45ml olive oil 300 to 400ml warm water

FILLING

125g butter, softened 15ml chopped garlic 250ml finely grated biltong 125ml chopped parsley grated rind and juice of

1 lemon

DOUGH:

Makes 16-18

Combine the flour, yeast, sugar and salt in a bowl.

Add the olive oil and enough warm water to make a dough that is soft but not sticky. Knead the dough well until smooth and elastic.

Place the dough into an oiled plastic bag and set aside in a warm place to rise.

When the dough has risen, remove from the bag and roll out into a rectangle about 40x20cm. Spread with the filling.

Roll up from the long side to form a log. Cut the log into about 3cm-thick existed.

Clemson University food scientist Paul Dawson points to Julia Child flubbing a potato pancake flip in an early episode of The French Chef as a sort of precursor. Her pancake doesn’t land on the floor, just on the stovetop, so she cooks it anyway. But Child seals her destiny as the patron saint of the wayward lamb with a quote: “Remember, you are alone in the kitchen and nobody can see you.”

Somewhere along the line, the five-second rule came to be. A 2003 University of Illinois survey slices and pack into a well-greased oven pan.

Cover and set aside to rise for 20-30 minutes.

Bake at 180°C for 25-30 minutes until golden brown and baked through.

Remove from the oven and turn onto a cooling rack. Delicious served warm.

FILLING:

Combine all the ingredients and mix well. indicated that seven in 10 women and six in 10 men were familiar with the rule.

Food science experts have been trying to understand – and debunk – the notion ever since. The show MythBusters busted it in 2005. Clemson’s Paul Dawson published the first peer-reviewed study taking a crack at the rule in 2007.

The new study aims to be a coup de grâce: the paper is the best, most comprehensive evidence to date that, as a rule, the five-second method doesn’t hold up.

The Rutgers researchers dropped

Serves 4-6 1 small butternut, peeled

and thinly sliced 4-6 potatoes, peeled and

thinly sliced salt and pepper 250ml grated Parmesan

cheese 250ml cream Arrange the sliced butternut and potato in an ovenproof dish. Season with salt and watermelon cubes, strawberry gummies, plain white bread and buttered bread (purchased from a New Jersey ShopRite) onto various surfaces from a height of 13cm. Those surfaces – carpet, ceramic tile, stainless steel and wood – were slathered with Enterobacter aerogenes, a bacterium with similar food-clinging ability to salmonella, but far less dangerous.

The scientists left the food on the surfaces for intervals varying from less than a second to five, 30 and 300 seconds. All told, the researchers performed each different type of pepper.

Scatter over the Parmesan and pour over the cream.

Bake at 180°C for an hour until the vegetables are tender.

Cover with tinfoil if it starts to burn on the top. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes before serving.

For an attractive variation I arranged the drop (for instance, gum on wood, five seconds; watermelon on stainless steel, less than a second) 20 times apiece, totalling 2 560 measurements.

The scientists then assessed how many bacteria had transferred to the surface.

Although time was a factor – the longer a food touched a surface, the more bacteria it had – what was far more relevant was the composition of food or surface.

“Bacteria don’t have legs, they move with the moisture,” as Schaffner pointed out. Wet food, butternut and potato slices in alternate circles to resemble a rose appearance in an ovenproof dish. This is quite finicky to do, but the end result does look attractive.

It’s better to do for a smaller number as this is more manageable. You can also use a mixture of half milk, half cream if you find cream too rich. therefore, had the highest risk of transfer.

Watermelon soaked up the most bacteria, the gummies the least.

To the surprise of the researchers, carpet transferred fewer bacteria than steel or tile. Wood was hard to pin down, showing a large variation.

The scientists concluded their paper, echoing Schaffner’s statement: “The five-second rule is a significant oversimplification for the chance of bacteria transfer in real life.” In other words, don’t drop that watermelon. – Washington Post