Five-Second Rule

It was not five seconds. It was a weekend.

One of the first things parents will tell their children as they teach them life lessons is "Don't eat food off the floor." This is sensible. After all, we walk on the floor, and our feet and footwear have been all over the place, possibly including some truly unsavory places.

However, as we grow older, we learn of loopholes to the rules or counterbalancing rules. In this case, what is commonly referred to as "the Five Second Rule". This is often justified by the fact that one of the other things parents often tell their children is "Don't waste food." and sometimes, when certain objects, say an apple that hasn't been bitten into yet, has fallen on the floor, a parent might teach their child, "You can just wash it off before you eat it."

Generally played for comedy, often cringe-comedy, a number of character types will willingly and voluntarily eat food off the floor if they had just dropped it, often by declaring "Five-second Rule!"

The actual amount of time is not important and can vary depending on the character. The simple fact that they're willing to use it as justification for doing something others typically perceive as disgusting or poor-mannered is the issue at hand.

Some characters won't even bother with a verbal justification of their actions, and either someone will invoke it for them, or they're some version of The Shameless, where calling them out on this won't provoke anything but a shrug as they continue eating.

This is Truth in Television, as many people will do this. It is also not a good idea, according to doctors and health officials, as it is the surface that matters, not the time spent there. Indeed, there is some social awareness of this fact. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone willing to invoke the five-second rule in a public restroom, for example, versus a carpeted office.

Whatever surface is used, though, count on at least one person to react with Squick.

The exact origins of the "Five Second" Rule are unclear, but the first written account of the rule is from a 1995 book, Wanted Rowing Coach by Brad Allen Lewis.

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Examples

Advertising

• The Simpsons: In a Burger King commercial, Homer is promoting a Whopper yet keeps messing up the take. In one of the outtakes, he accidentally knocks the burger on the floor and quickly picks up the patty claiming "3-second rule" before eating it.

Anime & Manga

• The Demon Girl Next Door: Referenced. When Yuuko seemingly passes out, as the switch on the Ancestor Statue has been flipped, allowing Lilith to take over Yuuko's body, Momo initially asks if Yuuko had been eating food off the ground. Her classmate, Anri, "helpfully" says that even Yuuko isn't that pathetic.
• Lucky Star: Kagami's classmate, Misao, invokes the five-second rule when she drops some cake on the floor and immediately eats it. However, when she later loses a meatball to the floor and mourns its "loss", Kagami smugly asks her about the five-second rule, and Misao admits that there are certain situations where it's not okay (like a sauce-covered object like a meatball rolling on the floor).
• My-HiME: After Mikoto tries to catch an Orphan that had taken a bite of the cake she and her team had made, and she causes Haruka to drop her own cake on the ground, Shizuru Fujino, of all people, President of the Absurdly Powerful Student Council (and noted as The Gadfly), actually says, "You can still eat it if you pick it up within five seconds." They do pick it up and serve it to the cooking contest judges. Between the cake that the Orphan bit out of, the floor cake, and a third cake that Shiho had faceplanted in, it comes as no surprise when all the judges (every named male character in series) is taken to the hospital with food poisoning.
• Nichijou: An early segment features Yukko desperately and over-dramatically trying to prevent a wiener from her lunch from hitting the floor. She ultimately fails, but as the food hits the floor Yukko is desperately and over-dramatically counting to three as she gets it, eats it, and declares herself safe thanks to the 3-second rule.

Comic Strips

• Drabble: Ralph drops a french fry on the floor of the living room, and declares "Five-second rule!" before retrieving it. He then sees another fry under the couch and eats that too, prompting his wife to quip "I see you also have a five-year rule."
• Oh Brother: In this comic, Bud and his friend are making popcorn, with the friend explaining the five second rule to Bud. Bud however concludes his friend likely doesn't own a dog when his dog eats the popcorn that falls on the ground within those five seconds.
• Pooch Café: Poncho and the other dogs are at a human party passing out pamphlets declaring the 5-second rule a myth... which is an excuse for them to take any dropped food for themselves.
• Red and Rover: Red drops a French fry on the ground but quickly scoops it up, citing the Five Second Rule. His dog Rover replies that he believes in the Five Week Rule.
• Zits: Connie finds an M&M lost in the couch and scarfs it down. Her husband Walt (an orthodontist), aghast, declares that she's clearly broken the Five-Second Rule. Connie replies, "You're obviously unfamiliar with the Chocolate Amendment."

Films — Animation

• One of the trailers for Inside Out has Joy and Disgust arguing over whether this applies to a grape that Riley dropped on the ground.
• Osmosis Jones: Zookeeper Frank DeTorre uses the "ten-second rule" to justify eating a boiled egg that a monkey had stolen from him, chewed on, and then dropped on the ground. This idiotic disregard for hygiene allows the Big Bad, a deadly virus, to enter his body.

Films — Live-Action

• "Crocodile" Dundee 2: After a mob attack on his apartment, Mick fixes a plate of eggs for the police officer who's been assigned to guard his door but drops one of the eggs on the floor. He quickly picks it up and puts it on the plate without telling the cop, but then the police chief arrives and chases the cop back to his post. The police chief proceeds to start eating the eggs, only to wince and spit out a piece of floor grit.
• Osmosis Jones: Ultimately what kickstarts the plot. When Frank gets his egg stolen by a monkey, he has a fight for it until it falls to the ground in which he picks it up claiming this before eating it in spite of his daughter rightfully pointing out how filthy it is. Given the egg had already been in the monkey's mouth for longer than five seconds before hitting the ground, it proved that Frank was Too Dumb to Live.

Jokes

• A horsefly and a dung beetle exit a cafeteria, each carrying a handful of dog doo-doo when the fly drops his meal on the floor. The dung beetle is quick to reprimand his friend, "Pick it up, now! Five-second rule!"

Literature

• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Exploited by some characters in Hard Luck. They decide that you can eat food off the floor within five seconds, even if it isn't yours. This leads to one of them getting sick after eating a piece of ham that had been on the floor for way more than five seconds.
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!: Catarina Claes is the reincarnation of a girl from modern day Japan in the world of her favorite Otome-game, Fortune Lover. Carrying with her the memories of her former life after a blow to the head, she drops any adherence to social protocol and behaves in a very undignified and tomboyish way, to the exasperation of her mother, Millidiana. Of particular exasperation to her mother is Catarina's willingness to eat food off the floor by declaring "Three-second Rule" (She is a royal, after all. Got to set some standards). Catarina even earns the affection of the original game's protagonist, Maria, after saving her from some bullies and eating Maria's homemade muffins from off the ground where the bullies had dumped them!

Live-Action TV

• Chef!: In "The Big Cheese", Piers drops a pheasant that he was preparing and then picks it up. He meets a look from Chef Blackstock, and sheepishly says, "I dropped it." Chef Blackstock replies, "Well, I didn't think you were trying to return it to the wild." Later it's implied that the bird was still being prepared for cooking, when Chef Blackstock, giving out an order says:
  Chef Blackstock: And potted Piers Patent Pheasant with floor-cleaner relish!
• Downton Abbey: A roast chicken falls on the floor and a cat starts nibbling it. New scullery maid Daisy wonders what they're going to tell their employers, but head chef Mrs. Patmore calmly picks the chicken up, dusts it off, and puts it back on the plate. It's implied this has happened many times before; Mrs. Patmore's philosophy is “what the eyes can’t see the heart won’t grieve over.”
• Grey's Anatomy: A somewhat serious example. In season 5, during a domino surgery in which eight people donate kidneys to eight other patients, Meredith Grey is walking with the donor kidney for her patient, but it slips from her hands and falls on the OR floor. She and Bailey stare back and forth between each other and the kidney on the floor, before Bailey yells out, "Five-second rule! Five-second rule!"
• Hell's Kitchen: In season three, Jen had just thrown out a large pot of pasta noodles when an order came in for one with noodles as a side dish. Thinking no one was looking, she tried to "take a serving off the top of the pile" from the trash can, saying that she only took some that didn't touch anything else but other pasta. She at least owned up to her mistake, and went on to make the black jackets.
• How I Met Your Mother: Played for Laughs. In "The Burning Beekeeper", Lily makes a cheese fall on the floor so no one can eat it, but Robin reminds her about the 5-second rule. Lily then stomps the cheese into pieces, and Robin tells her that the 5 seconds have passed anyway.
• Leverage: Hardison in one early episode drops a Hot Pocket on the floor, then blows on it before picking it up and eating it. He makes no invocation of the "Five-Second Rule", possibly because the rest of the team was absent, so he didn't need to justify himself to anyone.
• Mythbusters: Actually tested by the Mythbusters. The results were not promising to anyone who has ever invoked the rule, as it was determined that a mere millisecond on the floor could pick up bacteria and that it was the conditions of the surface, not the time spent there, that determined transference. They also came to the conclusion that the type of food was a far more important factor than the amount of time, as wet food types picked up more bacteria than dry food.

Video Games

• Fire Emblem: Three Houses: In Chapter 3, Hanneman vents about Manuela's "slovenly behavior" to Byleth if spoken to in the monastery. He mentions that he saw her pick up a sandwich she dropped and continue eating it, citing the three-second rule.
• Hades: Zagreus will sometimes justify eating the Inexplicably Preserved Dungeon Meat that drops when under the effect of certain power-ups (such as the Eye of Lamia or Harpy Feather Duster) with the five-second rule.
• Ittle Dew: Ittle invokes the five-second rule as she eats a freshly dropped heart.

Web Original

• From the Nemours KidsHealth website:
  • Deconstructed in this article, which says that the rule is not necessarily true, especially with wet food like apple slices.
  • On this page, a woman named Rosalyn asks if the 5-second rule is true because her son has a habit of eating food off the floor and justifies it that way. The website answers that the rule is not true, and is "just wishful thinking".

Web Video

• Lazy Purple employs a Dark Comedy version of the rule in "Extras from 'How it FEELS to Play Demoman in TF2'" after an enemy Demoman player dies before he can claim his collected heads (AKA: kills that boost his movement speed) for his own. Out of desperation, he swallows the severed heads whole before his head grows large enough to devour the camera.
• ProZD invokes the 5-second rule when he drops a microwaved pizza roll on the floor whilst yelling at the TV about the sloppy food presentation on an episode of Chopped in his skit "when you think you're an expert after watching a TV cooking competition".

Western Animation

• 6teen: Jude ends up losing his job at Stick It after it gets closed for multiple health code violations, and when asked by his friends if he even had the decency to handle the food safely, he less-than-reassuringly describes himself as living by the "three-second rule." Jen — who had recently eaten at Stick It — imagines that Jude dropped her order on the dirty, cockroach-ridden floor while she wasn't looking and then served to her anyway, and understandably gags.
• Arthur: In "Germophobia", Buster's friends are grossed out by his "sloppy" habits, one of which is eating food that he dropped on the floor, justifying it with the five-second rule.
• An episode of Big Hero 6: The Series had Fred try to invoke this, only for Baymax to explain how it's a load of bunk.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: Slightly exaggerated in "Infernal Slumber", when Bloo offers Mac a Potato Chip that fell on the ground.
  Bloo: Fell on the floor, but 2-second rule. (...) Well, 14-second rule.
• King of the Hill: In "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret Hill," Peggy (while posing as a nun) is giving her students communion. One boy's falls from his mouth, and Peggy simply wipes it on her habit and pops it back in his mouth while citing the trope.
• Regular Show: In "Bad Kiss", Mordecai and Rigby go back in time to prevent Mordecai's bad breath from ruining his first kiss with Margaret. One of these attempts involves pushing away a hot dog truck as past!Mordecai is being served a chili dog with onions. The truck rolls away as past!Mordecai's being served the food and it falls on the concrete pavement, and past!Mordecai immediately picks it up and eats it anyway, invoking the five-second rule.
• The Simpsons: Deconstructed during the "Treehouse of Horror XXXIV" segment "Lout Break". Homer disobeys the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant's rules against eating on the job, despite Smithers explicitly reminding him, and accidentally drops a donut into nuclear waste, but still eats it. This ends up making a mutagenic virus which turns all Springfielders (except Bart, Lisa, and Maggie, who already have his DNA) into clones of himself. Professor Frink tries to stop the virus from spreading beyond Springfield, only to also be contaminated, which dooms humanity to succumb to Homerized destruction.
• Star Trek: Prodigy: After the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits learn about the transporter, they put it to the test by beaming a slice of pie all around the ship, then are amazed that it's still hot when it beams. At one point, Gwyn even picks it up off the floor and eats it, declaring it delicious, with Jankom Pog even marvelling at the idea of "floor pie".
• Team Toon: After Miss Monica drops a thermos flask containing soup on the ground, Iko asks if the trope applies to soup too. Before anyone can stop him, he pulls out a piece of bread and mops up the floor soup with it, much to everyone's disgust.
• T.U.F.F. Puppy: In "Cruisin' For a Bruisin'", Snaptrap's mobile iceberg lair, which he plans to use to sink the T.U.F.F. cruise ship, has an all-you-can-eat salad bar inside it. When Snaptrap serves himself some salad, a lettuce leaf falls onto the floor. Snaptrap then exclaims "Five-second rule!", and in his effort to catch the leaf with his tongue, gets his tongue stuck to the icy floor.

Real Life

• In 2004, Jillian Clark was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in Public Health for her research on the five-second rule. She found that food dropped on a contaminated surface can pick up bacteria almost instantly, and that wet food picks up more bacteria than dry food.

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Eh, these examples have only been on the floor for a moment. They should still be good.