Feature image of Monique Bowley and Mouldy Bread from facebook.com/mouldybread.
It was right at the end of my morning toast the other day that I peered down and realised what I thought was a grain, was, in fact, a green spot of mould.
And just like one of those magic eye puzzles where a picture is suddenly revealed, I realised with a blink that the bread had quite a few tiny bits of mould on it. So without further thought, I ate around it.
Shortly after, I poured myself a cup of tea (after sniffing the milk which was past the use-by, too), and, later that day I ate a tub of Greek yogurt that was five days past its use by. It’s not something I tend to make a habit of, it was just a busy week and I hadn’t been to the shops.
When I laughed about the state of my pantry and fridge to a friend later that day, she almost ran into oncoming traffic. “You CAN’T EAT THAT!” she hissed. “That’s DISGUSTING. Plus, the spores can grow inside of you and you’ll get liver disease.”
Others reacted similarly with turned up noses and sneers. These are the same people that will honk into a piece of blue cheese and drink a 4-year-old bottle of wine with no problems.
Listen, before you cry foul too, I know that health wise, a lot of mould can be hell. Exposure can be really toxic. I’m talking more about our aversion to the little bits on the stuff: spots on hard cheese, salami, bread, crumpets, butter, the jam jar….etc. I’m talking about cutting the brown bit off an apple and eating the rest, or working around an onion that’s gone a bit weird in the middle or on one side, too.
Mould is a funghi, right? I eat mushrooms and no one flips out at that . Penicillin is a mould, so what’s the big deal? Plus, everyone’s going on about gut bacteria at the moment – drinking keffir and kombucha and ‘live cultures’ in their drinks. Can’t my gut handle a bit of acidophils, bifidus and mouldishness?
We talked about it on the podcast, and were divided into two camps. Kate de Brito and I take a relaxed approach to the words “use-by”.
It was just one of the topics on Mamamia Out Loud. It’s the show with what women are talking about. From celebs, to politics, to pantry moths and more. Listen in itunes or to the full episode, here:
Kate sniffs the milk to see if it’s still okay, scrapes the mould off the tomato paste, and ignores those moth webs in her oats. We both agreed that sour cream can probably go a week past and still be fine.
Mia Freedman, however, is a use-by-date stickler. Those little printed numbers are gospel. And now I’m torn.
Because of course, I did what anyone would do and googled it. And scientists say there are some cases where it’s fine to cut the mould off but BEWARE BEWARE BEWARE because it will ruin your health and burn your house down and grow a mushroom in your stomach.
So maybe I’m too relaxed with the use-by. But “best-before”? That’s a whole new story – where the date literally means “This food was in its best condition before this date but it’s still okay to eat.”
I’ve stretched best-before dates into years. It’s like Kate De Brito says; what did they do in the depression days? Older generations would never throw out the jam for a bit of a mould. They’d can and bottle, preserve and make do. They’d eat non-perishables whose ‘best-before’ dates had almost faded with age. Australians waste billions of food every year. The stats are off the charts:
And so much of it unnecessary.
Are you a mould-eater?
Top Comments
"sniffs the milk to see if it’s still okay"
Aside from those times when a few drops can get funky around the rim, it's usually really easy to tell with a sniff if cow's milk is still okay. If it smells like milk, alkaline, then it's 'always' going to be fine. Only reason I use scare-quotes there is because I guess ninjas could have broken in and poisoned it...
"scrapes the mould off
the tomato paste"
NO NO NO OMG NO - you can get some of the WORST possible food poisoning from acidic tomato-related mould! You also can NOT ensure you've removed all or even most of the mould, since the 'fluff' you see on top is only a portion of it; on any sauce or soft food, the mould itself as well as bacteria and toxins produced are all through that product by the time you have to scrape the top off.
It also doesn't matter how hot or how long you cook it, since toxins (note: using the correct meaning of the word here) produced by foodborne bacteria such as E. Coli and Staphylococcus aureus are not affected by heat treatment - and it's the toxins which result in you exploding from both ends, rather than the bacteria themselves.
Visible mould doesn't mean the food is bacterially compromised, but it's very likely since they flourish under the same conditions and with similar time-frames in most foods.
"and ignores those moth webs in her oats"
Ewwwww - never been able to handle grubs, weevils or pantry moths in my food... I'm not sure of the health impact, but I'd throw up.
"We both
agreed that sour cream can probably go a week past and still be fine."
With you there. Once it's start changing colours though, unless it's just a small spot on the lid or side (where the mould roots are unlikely to go deep), it should hit the bin.
When in doubt, throw it out! Cases of food poisoning likely cost our countries more in lost productivity and health costs than the small proportion of food which could be safely salvaged.
If someone offered you $5 to be crippled by diarrhoea and vomiting for 24-72hrs, would you accept? Obviously it's not worth it to have crap food practices, especially when you're risking not just illness but lost income as well.
Mould is so bad for you. I never risk it with mould.
As stated in the article: penicillin is a mould. They're not all bad!
And because one particular mould is good it follows that every mould is good. Yay for science.
I didn't mean all moulds are good! Just pointing out that because some members of a group are bad, doesn't mean they all are - this can be applied to almost anything.