To Eat or Not to Eat

I am a follower of the 5-second rule.  For some, it's the 3-second rule, but I feel that 3 seconds is not enough time to realize you dropped the food and pick it up.  My mother, however,  believes that if it falls on the floor it is null and void and should immediately be thrown out.  If I followed this rule, my kids would starve to death, being that about half of the food I give them ends up somewhere other than their mouths.

Now, the 5-second rule does not apply to "wet" foods like, let's say, banana slices, because the moisture makes any hair or dust particle stick like glue, and that's gross.  But for "dry" foods like crackers or cereal which can be blown clean, the rule applies.  Except for at my mother's house. 

Being that nobody walks on my mother's floor with shoes on since they are required to take them off at the door, I consider her floors to be cleaner than most, so when I gave Mia a bowl of Cheese Nips and she flipped them all on the floor I just put them back in the bowl.  My mother did NOT approve of this, and proceeded to tell me all the reasons why floors harbor all sorts of germs and dirt as she dumped the Cheese Nips in the garbage and refilled Mia's bowl with "clean" ones.  And I let her, because deep down I know she's right, but if I worried about every cracker that touched the floor before it went into my kid's mouth, my hair would be white by now.  So, when my kids are home, they have 5 seconds.  When they're at Grandma's they'd better pick it up and shove it in their mouths before Grandma sees them, or say "bye-bye" to the crackers.