When five seconds is too long

It was 1245 pm at the Readerrsquos Digest office at Vaju Kotak Mark I donrsquot wear a watch never have but I was sure about the time My cue was the appearance of the dabbawala with my hot homecooked mothermade South Indian lunchUntil COVID19 and the Swiggyrsquos and Zomatos of the world drove them to extinction the punctuality and efficiency of Mumbairsquos dabbawalas were legendaryLogistics companies like FedEx studied them to learn their secrets The Harvard Business School wrote about their business model which has received Six Sigma Certification This coveted rating is given to any process capable of producing 9999966 per cent defectfree products equivalent to 34 defects per million opportunitiesIt was my rotten luck that one day my lunch dabba became one of those 34 defects per millionThe dabbawala came straight up to my desk ldquoSirjirdquo he said ldquotoday your dabba fell out of the tray and some of the rice and dal landed on the roadrdquoA part of me wondered if the man had raided my hot mealldquoBut donrsquot worry sirrdquo he said as though reading my mind ldquoItrsquos all back there now I scooped the food up from the road and put it right back in the dabbardquoldquoHow long was it on the road before you put it backrdquoldquoNot more than 10 secondsrdquo he said ldquoYou can eat it without fearrdquoCould I really How long is food safe to eat after it falls on a dirty surfaceThere is a fivesecond rule that says food picked up off a contaminated surface within five seconds is safe to eat But is it trueThe most exhaustive study into this was done at Rutgers University They grew a salmonella strain and applied it to a carpet ceramic tile stainless steel and wood Carpets they found were poorer transmitters of germs than other surfacesThe flatter and wetter the food like bread buttered bread and gummy candy a 2016 study found the more likely it was to get contaminatedMoisturerich foods such as watermelons are like sponges easily picking up salmonella E coli or staph infections within one second off the floor Even more dangerous say experts might be food dropped on a kitchen counter or cutting board that has been touched by raw meat which can contain various deadly bacteriaA slight American woman at a 10person dinner at my house begged to differ She picked up pasta and cheese that had fallen on the floor and popped it in her mouth An OMG momentldquoThis is how I build up my immune systemrdquo she explained ldquoIn my country people are obsessed with hygiene and theyrsquore paying a big price for itrdquoImmune system disorders like multiple sclerosis Type 1 diabetes inflammatory bowel disease asthma and allergies are all spiking in the US and developed countries Obsessively protected from germs their immune systems are out of whack sitting ducks to every germ that comes alongBut Mumbairsquos streetchildren eat off sidewalks and rubbish dumps daily The neighbourhood puchkawalla wipes his hands on a damp smelly overused dishclothmdashand then dips it into the jal jeera for you Yoursquore getting way more than you paid forCrawling toddlers instinctively put things from the floor into their mouths until Mama pries them outResearchers into the socalled hygiene hypothesis say that the millions of bacteria viruses and especially worms that enter the body along with ldquodirtrdquo spur the development of a healthy immune system Some studies say that worms may help calm down a hypersensitive immune system that triggers autoimmune disorders allergiesand asthmaDr Joel Weinstock gastroenterologist and hepatologist in Boston says the immune system at birth ldquois like an unprogrammed computer It needs instruction Children raised in an ultraclean environment are not being exposed to organisms that help them develop appropriate immune regulatory circuitsrdquoDr David Elliott gastroenterologist at the University of Iowa says ldquoDirtiness comes with a price But cleanliness comes with a price toordquo His studies suggest that intestinal worms might be the best lsquoinfluencersrsquo in calming down a hypersensitive immune systemMy American friend Bill a lifelong sufferer of an incurable poorly understood lethal autoimmune disorder called sarcoidosis would agree The disease regularly ravages and depletes him but this time he looked pink and chipper when I met him on a Bangkok streetldquoYou found a curerdquo I asked himldquoNordquo he said ldquoI got myself a hookworm infection in CambodiardquoMost Cambodian doctors he told me donrsquot have a clue what asthma is because they hardly ever encounter it Nearly every Cambodian child playing barefoot in the village dust picks up hookworm infection Not many know that among parasitical worms the hookworm is exceptional in negotiating a peace treaty with the immune system By dialling down the human immune response it ensures its own survivalIn Cambodia Bill found a doctor who specialised in hookworm infestation who introduced hookworm larvae into Billrsquos body through cuts on his forearm Within 10 days Bill was as worminfested as any Cambodian child Not long after his immune system calmed down and his sarcoidosis symptoms recededldquoIrsquove never felt betterrdquo he told meYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper