It Fell on the Floor...Should I Eat It?
Last week my daughter spent a couple of hours with her babysitter putting together some chicken enchiladas that turned out astoundingly well. I wolfed down a few for lunch, and was looking forward to several more after I got home from training my evening clients.
After I returned, Kate reached for the serving dish of enchiladas, which sat on top of the oven...and they all came crashing down on the floor.
Upon first seeing the pile of food and the broken casserole dish, I thought it might be possible to separate the food from the shards of glass. I mean, these enchiladas were seriously great. Besides, how bad can swallowing a few pieces of broken glass really be, after all? Is it really all that dangerous to have a handful of bits of razor-sharp, undigestible building material work its way through your intestines?
But I thought better of it, swept up, and sent out for a pizza.
Short of having to sort through an indiscriminate pile of Tex-Mex and shattered glass, many of us face the dilemma of having to decide whether to eat or discard something that's fallen on the floor. Fortunately, some folks have come up with only a slightly tongue-in-cheek flow chart to help you decide:
According to the LA TIMES, where I found this chart, the 5-second rule should safely be renamed the 30-seconds rule; that's the time threshold after which it's likely your food will accrue dangerous levels of bacteria. Personally, I want to know what's so great about pumas that they can eat raw steak and I can't.
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Wow
That’s great! I might have to print it out (but hopefully never have to use it ;))!
by MattGaul on Jan 26, 2010 6:03 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
Funny
I wonder who spent this amount of time on the flowchart? Great stuff.
by Deek67 on Jan 26, 2010 8:09 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
That is good stuff.
I’m renowned among my circle for eating food that’s been dropped on the floor, left out overnight, or just plain expired – sometimes by a year or more. I may take it a bit farther than most people, but if there isn’t hair stuck to it, it smells normal, it looks normal, and the first, small test-bite tastes normal, I’m gonna eat it. Haven’t gotten sick yet.
P.S. The things I’ve eaten well past expiration are almost all cheeses and yogurt, which I’m pretty convinced can’t “go bad.”
P.P.S. I have no scientific basis for these opinions, other than the fact that I haven’t gotten sick doing it yet. :)
by stuntmonkeys on Jan 26, 2010 9:39 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
Hilarious
I would have liked to have seen you go toe-to-toe with the long-expired science-experiment yogurt that I found in my fridge the other day. It looked like the surface of Dagobah.
by Andrew Heffernan on Jan 29, 2010 11:36 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs
haha
I dont doubt your super power of not getting food illnesses but most people dont even realize they are not feeling up to par because of that food they ate the day before. People think they have to be puking to have ate bad food.
"When you argue correctly, you're never wrong."-Nick Naylor
by Hook85 on Feb 5, 2010 12:14 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs
I had to laugh today. I was eating some cashews and one fell on the floor. Now, given that I am doing Warp Speed Fat Loss diet, it was a crisis moment. A precious, sweet, delicious cashew had hit the floor.
You bet I ate it.
2 days to go!
by OneMadFFB on Jan 28, 2010 9:53 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
haha
Funny chart!
I aways inspect my dropped food and determine something of those guide lines.
is there hair?
Dirt?
Is it raw steak..lol
"When you argue correctly, you're never wrong."-Nick Naylor
by Hook85 on Feb 5, 2010 12:05 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

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