Poll: Food that touched the floor, do you eat it ?

[Shoggoth2588]

So my question is: when you drop food on the floor, do you pick it up and eat it?

And as a bonus question : if you do eat food that dropped on the floor , how long before you deem it's no longer edible?

Also out of curiosity , what was the last thing you ate off the floor?

a - It depends on where I drop the food! If it's dropped on a fuzzy floor, probably not. If it's dropped in a puddle of something than no. If it's dropped on a hard surface than probably
b - If I find something and can't remember when I was eating that kind of thing, I don't eat it. I don't normally eat something unless I just dropped it.
c - Bit of a scone

 

[Tumedus]

As already said, the 5 second rule is bollocks. Whether it be 5 milliseconds or a full minute, once it has hit the floor, the "damage" is done. And in most cases that "damage" is negligible. That kind of time frame isn't going to considerably change the level of germs and dirt that are now on your food. If we are talking about days versus seconds, then yeah there might be some argument there, but 5 seconds or 30 seconds, eat it or don't.

You honestly get more filth in your system if you use a door knob and don't wash before eating than you do by eating a stray potato chip.

So yeah, If its a dry food, you pick it up and it isn't damp from anything and doesn't have particles of something not there before, I say just eat the darned thing. Chances are everything that you think just got added to it were already there and in the air you are breathing anyway.

As an aside, to kind of put it in perspective, consider that absolutely everything in the world that you smell, has just been ingested.

 

[SuperSuperSuperGuy]

I also think it depends on the food and floor. If you drop something sticky, gooey or mushy, then it's bad to eat, regardless of where it was dropped. If it's something hard, then it depends on the floor. If the floor is outside, it's unfit to eat. If it's carpet, it's probably bad to eat. If it's hardwood or tile, then that depends on if it's a public building or not and how many people have stepped there; I would not eat food that has fallen on the floor of my school, for example, but at home it's probably fine.

There are significantly more factors to this problem than are probably necessary...

 

[Zeldias]

Depends on the floor, food, how fast I pick it up, and what animals are around.

I generally don't unless I snatch it up REALLY fast and it fell in the kitchen, which I clean pretty often and very well. There's carpet in a lot of my house, and I own several cats, and don't really want a cat hair/carpet fiber sammich.

 

[trollnystan]

It depends on a lot of variables but generally I live by the rule I grew up with: Lite skit rensar magen. Translates roughly into: "A bit of crap cleanses the stomach."

I mean, if my peanut butter sandwich lands butterside down on the floor, then hell no I ain't eating it. But if it lands - via some miracle - butterside UP then NOMNOMNOMGETINMYBELLY.

 

[Noetherian]

Nobody's gotten George Carlin in here yet?


(He starts in on germs around 2:00 into this one.)

 

[You Can't Take the Sky From Me]

As long as I'm at home, and the food in question is relatively dry, I'd probably eat it. The way I see it is, I'm probably breathing in whatever might be on the food anyways.

 

[DkLnBr]

Depends what it landed on, if it fell on something dry then I follow the "however long its been there" rule (unless its been there so long its gone moldy). Just brush off the dirt and its like new! Bacteria transfers on contact, its not going to wait there until a specific time, so its not going to make very much of a difference if you wait or pick it up immediately.

 

[Biggyzoom]

Depends on all the things listed in posts above. If I'm handling food at work however then I NEVER attempt to save or use it and throw it away.

 

[TallanKhan]

It depends on the food and on the floor in question. If i drop something on my kitchen floor i will generally pick it up, depending on what it is of course (I won't be scraping soup up off of the floor). I have a tile floor and I don't wear shoes in the house, dont have any pets and clean the floor regularly so in reality its probably no dirtier than my sideboard. I wouldn't pick food up off of the carpet or from anywhere else really.

 

[piinyouri]

If it's visibly covered in anything, nope. If it looks fine, then I probably will.
I'm very aware that something can look clean and still be covered in germs, but it doesn't worry me. It's just target practice for my immune system.

 

[Something Amyss]

Depends on both the food (how porous or sticky it is) and where I dropped it. My kitchen floor is normally clean enough to eat off of, so if I bounce a grape or something, five second rule. slab of pizza goes face down? SCREW THAT.