this made my day

I believe in a indefinite period of time rule. The food might pickup dust / mites / microbes, so what? There are dust/mites/microbes everytime you breath. You probably swallow other people's shit particles several times a day. It's OK, you have an immune system that can deal with it. If you do (very very rarely) get an infection we live in magical times where an antibiotic pill will clear it right up. You could lick the floor at the sports stadium bathroom and you'll be OK. People need to stop it with the cooties crap.

The wikipedia article claims most people who invoke the rule use it in jest, but there is research that indicates different surfaces allow for different speeds of bacterial spread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-second_rule

Time for some true confessions. My mental risk model tells me I'm not more likely to get sick if the food touches some surface. I'm a pessimist so I generally assume all those bacteria are already on the food and/or in my body. I don't know if my risk model matches reality or not.

But it would have made an interesting article if someone discovered you could often leave food on the ground for multiple minutes without issue, and named the article after their new "five minute rule" ;P.