by Michael Smith
Many Gohja believe that if some piece of food falls onto the floor and has been there for five seconds or less – the so-called “five second rule” - it can still be eaten and is entirely safe. They also believe that the Romani Mokadi code's rule of throwing away food that has fallen on the floor and not eating it is superstition and such.
However, yet again, much as with the case of not having dogs and cats indoors, science has proven that our Ancient Ones were right in the first place. There is no safe time with food falling on the ground.
It is probably not safe to eat anything that has been on the floor for even one second. In a recent experiment, food scientists contaminated several surfaces with Salmonella. They then dropped pieces of bologna and slices of bread on the floor for as little as five seconds and as long as a whole minute. In the five seconds, both the bread and the bologna picked up an alarming 1,800 types of bacteria. So unless sterilize someone's floor is sterilized and I mean sterilized on an hourly basis it is not safe in any way to eat anything that has fallen onto the floor. The same applies for anything that your shoes may have touched, too.
So, once again proof that the Mokadi Code given to us by our Ancient Onces is as valid today as it was in the days of yore. Hence, once again, we should live by it still and continue to do so.
What is the most amazing part, in my view, is that our Old Ones knew this without having the science to prove it. We do have, I know, all the means of sterilizing cutlery and such like so they do not, maybe, have to be thrown after having accidentally fallen onto the floor or the earth. Food, however, is a different kettle of fish, so to speak, and this does not just apply to fish, and with the food poisoning bacteria it can pick us to quickly by falling on the ground it just is not safe to eat anything that has thus fallen and come in possible contact with contamination.
We can now but wonder how much else is in that ancient knowledge transmitted to us via the old codes, such as the Mokadi Law, which science will, sooner or later, prove to be right and valid still to this very day. Very good reason, methinks, to keep living by it.
© M Smith (Veshengro), September 2008
<>
