Momlogic's Vivian: My kids have done it. Your kids have done it. A chocolate chip cookie or some other irresistible morsel of tasty goodness slips out of their grasp and onto the ground, and the lure of snatching it up again and shoving it in one's mouth like it never happened sure is powerful.
But should we let our kids do this? After all, how many germs can jump on a single cookie in three seconds?
Dr. Philip M. Tierno, author of The Secret Life of Germs: Observations and Lessons from a Microbe Hunter, and director of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology at the New York University Langone Medical Center, hereby explains why there is no such thing as a "three-second rule."
