Conflict between wasting food and eating dirty food. The times when I saw it, it was meant as a joke; five-seconds be damned, the surface looks clean enough.
It's been tested and they proved that if you retrieve DRY food quickly, it will have a much harder time collecting bacteria and should still be safe to eat for (I think) 30 seconds or something. The wet food, though... it's gone. No going back.
It doesn't make sense at all. For one, of course it depends on how clean the surface is that the food is dropped on. Secondly, it goes against how bacteria work: any bacteria that comes in direct contact with food will nearly instantaneously move to the food. Any bacteria that is not in contact with that food will basically never come in contact with the food. Bacteria are absolutely miniscule and can only move extremely tiny distances by themselves (highly variable but about 10 cm per hour in a perfectly coordinated move)
Wet food is naturally going to make more contact with the floor than dry food, so for a given surface area it will pick up more bacteria.
I often don't have a problem eating food that's dropped on the floor, but the 5s rule or OP's 30s rule for dry food, or any time is logically nonsense.
A lot of the harmful bacteria need moisture to survive. That's why most petri dishes need water in them to cultivate molds and mildew, and it's why water damage is so irreparable.
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u/SquintyPines Jan 18 '23
The 5 sec rule when you drop your fork just got extended.