Which is Worse: Double Dipping or the Five Second Rule?

It's time to settle the greatest debate in food contamination history. Which is worse: double dipping a chip or picking up food off the ground and eating it?

On one hand, when you double dip a chip, you contaminate the entire bowl of dip with bacteria. On the other hand, eating food from the floor is also covered in bacteria.

Thanks to a new study, we have a definitive answer as to which move is riskier: double dipping. A food scientist found that a bowl of dip where someone had double dipped as filled with more bacteria than the average floor.

Paul Dawson, the author of Did You Just Eat That?, found that a double dipped bowl picks up way more bacteria than one that was single dipped. These are also person-to-person germs, things like the cold, flu, coughs, and more gross stuff.

When you drop something on the floor and quickly pick it up, it's actually transferring less bacteria than you'd think. Most surfaces do not have any kind of dangerous bacteria.

And, just so you know, dropping food on carpet picks up fewer germs than on tile or wood floors. The carpet ends up absorbing a lot of bacteria.