[Ads-l] Eating food that has fallen onto the floor

[Wilson Gray]

> http://newsstand.clemson.edu/clemson-researcher-5-second-
rule-means-food-is-safe-right-dont- > bet-your-life-on-it/
<http://newsstand.clemson.edu/clemson-researcher-5-second-rule-means-food-is-safe-right-dont-bet-your-life-on-it/>

I saw this, but I didn't read it. The "dont-bet-your-life-on-it" part
caused me to take the article as being about the consequences and not about
the saying.

Well, I've now read it and it turns out that the article _is_ about the
consequences and not about the saying.

Full disclosure: I do eat food that I've let fall onto the floor, but only
if it's in my own house. Not that that makes it less dangerous than eating
food that's fallen onto the floor anywhere else. But the person that I
first heard mention what she called the "three-second rule" picked up and
ate food that she had let fall onto the break-room floor.

BTW, doesn't the kind of food enter into it? I wouldn't eat a spoonful of
stew off any floor anywhere. Probably nobody else would, either.

On Mon, Dec 25, 2017 at 8:30 AM, Benjamin M Brainard <brainard at uga.edu>
wrote:

> And actually researched by some folks at Clemson:
>
> http://newsstand.clemson.edu/clemson-researcher-5-second-
> rule-means-food-is-safe-right-dont-bet-your-life-on-it/
>
> ...ben
>
> On Dec 25, 2017, at 3:38 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM<mailto:hwgra
> y at GMAIL.COM>> wrote:
>
> That you can eat food that has fallen onto the floor, if you pick it up
> within some random number of seconds, seems to be a widespread "rule." Or
> not. I first heard it in Boston ca. 1996. My personal experience is that,
> in general, people eat food that's fallen onto floor or they don't, without
> saying anything about it
>
> IAC, during Christmas (Eve) dinner, this "rule" was applied, motivating me
> to note that, among black East Texans, people say that "a little grit is
> good for your craw." One of my sisters-in-law remarked that she had grown
> up [in NE PA] with the expression,
>
> "You'll eat a pound of earth before you die."
>
> That's a new one on me.
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org