I’m talking about the kind that grows on food–fruits and cheese. I know some is harmless (like in Bleu cheese), but what about your garden variety mold? What are the chances that eating it is going to hurt you?
I eat moldy stuff all the time, but never meat.
It’s one of the things they tell you in boy scout survival guides, that you can’t be picky when you’re lost and the sun is going down.
Two separate issues here, one is the mold itself, the other is its status as an indicator.
Some species of mold can be relatively toxic, many types are mildly toxic and should not be eaten regularly. A very few are non-toxic. The chance of having an allergic reaction to a mold are also fairly high in terms of overall allergens. The spores of some species are quite dangerous pathogens in there own right. Basically your chances of getting acutely poisoned by a mold are fairly slight but probably not worth the risk.
Far more important is the fact that molds are simply visible microbes. They provide proof positive that your food has had the opportunity to become contaminated by microbes, and left under conditions in which microbial growth is possible. If there are molds growing on your food there will also be bacteria and other microbes growing. Depending on the food type these other microbes can be very serious indeed. Be very cautious about eating some types of mouldy food not because of the mold, but because of the bacteria which will invariably accompany them.
Gaspode’s right. Another thing to keep in mind is that many molds, when under stress, produce aflatoxins, which are very potent carcinogens. We just ran into some aflatoxin-contaminated stuff where I work, so we did some research. Turns out that as far as we could find, there have been no confirmed deaths from aflatoxins, but since they’re carcinogens, you’d be hard-pressed to diagnose them.
Also, while Gaspode’s point about molds as indicators is true, molds are generally able to grow in less favorable conditions than bacteria, especially when it comes to acidic pH. So depending on the food, bacteria may or may not be a concern.
I recently overheard someone talking about some regimen he was on which involved deliberately eating a few moldy raspberries every week as a sort of antibiotic. It sounds rather unpleasant, but would it be dangerous in the long run?
Oo, oo, I have a mold question, too!
If you see something fuzzy growing on your food, is it always a mold? Or could it be a colony of bacteria?
I’ve eaten moldy bread on a sandwich, and never died. But I wouldn’t eat moldy meat, or fruit.
My mother ate some of the same moldy bread and got a rash. She is allergic to penicillin and I am not.
Those aflatoxins, where are they most likely to be found? (I think I remember something about peanuts). Are any certain foods especially likely to have those dangerous molds on them?
It’d be mold 99% of the time.
Peanuts and other nuts do seem to have them more often. Also peppers and chilis for some reason (the product we found them in was a chili). I don’t recall any others that popped up in our research.
Please elaborate: how can I keep my mold stress-free to avoid this hazard?
Time off from work, massages, a supportive home life. Maybe a miniature hot tub…
Naw, unless they’re on a petri dish full of media in a nice comfy incubator, they’ll be under some amount of stress. The amount of stress required to stimulate toxin production varies from species to species, so it’s hard to say what the odds are. OK, really, I just don’t know.