With 180 episodes under its belt, Seinfeld has more than a few contenders to choose from when it comes to unforgettable moments. One legendary scene that loyal viewers undoubtedly remember is the sequence from Season 4’s “The Implant,” in which George gets called out for double-dipping a chip. “You dipped the chip, you took a bite, and you dipped again,” George’s girlfriend’s brother, Timmy, informs him afterward. “That’s like putting your whole mouth right in the dip,” Timmy continues.
23 years later, MythBusters hosts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage decided to put Timmy’s little theory to the test on their show. In the June 3, 2009, episode, the pair conducted a series of experiments using chips and dip to measure the microbes present in the dip before and after double-dipping.
This involved them filling their mouths with the dip and spitting it back into the bowl so as to simulate putting their entire mouths in it. The duo’s initial attempt didn’t give them the results they were hoping for, however, because they discovered that the unused dip was already riddled with bacteria.
MythBusters Once Put Seinfeld’s Famous Double-Dipping Scene to the Test
The second time around, Hyneman and Savage took their experiment a step further by sterilizing the chips and dip. First, Savage brought bags of chips to a radiation lab to have them decontaminated, which he was assured was perfectly safe. Then, Hyneman whipped up a special kind of dip composed of agar and sterilized water. On top of all that, the boys enlisted the help of a parthenogenesis expert to make sure that this test ran smoother than the previous one.
In the end, the two found that the double-dipped samples contained far fewer microbes than the samples they’d spit back into the bowl. Therefore, Timmy from Seinfeld’s assertion that double-dipping was the equivalent of putting your whole mouth in the dip was incorrect. “So to all those germaphobes out there, I say, double-dipping…not such a big deal,” Savage concluded. “Besides, what the heck’s your immune system for anyway?”
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