You Can't Be Too Clean.

We Brits still abide by the five-second rule. If food has been lying on the floor less than that, go ahead and eat it--regardless of surface conditions. Which explains the shocked faces clustered around my barbecue in Brooklyn the other day. The "chef," another Brit, had just flipped a hot dog off the ground and back onto the grill. "It'll cook off the germs," he said nonchalantly. I understood perfectly. But not my American guests. They are clean freaks, almost one and all.

To outsiders, America's mania for hygiene is quite extraordinary. When I moved to New York a year ago, I was astonished at what I would occasionally see on the subway: commuters carrying MoistWipes (tiny hand towels laced with antimicrobial detergents) to clean off the residue left on seats and poles by previous riders. Some even refused to touch the poles, instead hugging them with their jackets or some other makeshift bacterial body condom. I'd regarded such people as aliens--until one day last summer when I was riding the No. 9 train downtown with a friend. Armed with a miniature bottle of sanitizer, she proceeded to give her hands a quick squirt every time she touched anything. Touch, squirt. Touch, squirt.

Not even the hardiest Americans are immune from such squeamishness. I remember my rugby teammates at university in California. Often they'd refuse water at halftime, fearing the gallon jugs we shared might convey unhealthy microbes from the mouths of others. They'd rather stay parched--or get beaten to a pulp, for that matter--than ingest a gentle germ or two. So you hardly ever see those "old-fashioned" twist-off water-bottle tops anymore. It's just those blasted germ-unfriendly nozzle-top contraptions, which let you guzzle "accurately" without oral-plastic contact. (I don't know about you, but I always end up with more liquid on my shirt than in my mouth.) And in the locker room? Soap--forget it. I grew up sharing it, using any handy bar that was lying around. After all, soap is soap--a cleansing product. Isn't it therefore fair to assume it would clean itself? (I'm sure there's a scientific term for this.) Yet in America, people--even mud-caked rugby players--think I'm a freak, as if I were sharing a dirty syringe.

Hygiene is such an obsession that we brand it. Walk into any drugstore and what do you see? Nice 'n' Clean lotions. Wash Away Your Sins towelettes. PhoneKleen telephone disinfectant pads. Purell sanitizers ("Kills 99.9% of Germs"). Rembrandt's Antibacterial Breath Drops. Products, ...