Is Mold Safe To Eat On Bread?
It is not safe to eat moldy bread. Mold is a type of fungus that can grow on a variety of foods, including bread. While some types of mold are safe to eat, such as the mold used to make blue cheese, other types of mold can produce toxins that can be harmful to humans
Those who have allergies to mold that they can breathe can also have damaging reactions – including potentially fatal anaphylaxis – when they consume it in their foods. If you are allergic to mold, you can experience anaphylactic shock, which can be life-threatening. If you are not allergic to mold, it is unlikely that you will get very sick if you accidentally ingest some.
Betty Feng cautions that even if you do not become sick with the mold, you can still get an allergic reaction from the spores, particularly if you try and take a big sniff. When it comes to soft or moist foods, such as bread, fruits, or cream cheese, Betty Feng says simply cutting away moldy spots isnat enough to keep you from accidentally eating the mold.
Simply cutting away the moldy bits on your bread isnat enough to guarantee safety, because there are these annoying roots growing deeper in your food. I even considered just cutting out a chunk and saving the rest of the bread. Okay, throwing away a whole load of bread because a single piece has gotten mouldy sounds like a huge waste of money and food. However, I learned from my research that it is NEVER worth cutting out mold itself to eat the rest of your bread.
| Is it safe to eat moldy bread? | How to protect your bread from mold? |
| Eating stale bread is not safe. Even a small amount of mold on a loaf of bread indicates that it is likely contaminated throughout. | Always keep the bread away from heat and moisture, as they allow the mold spores to spread more quickly. |
| The likelihood is that you’ll get sick after consuming moldy bread within a few hours after you’ve eaten it. | Keeping the bread in a cool, dry environment, such as a freezer, helps keep the mold from growing. |
If you are not terribly freaked out about that blotch of mold in your meal, you may be tempted to simply cut it and keep eating, but whether or not this is really a good idea depends on the meal. Just be sure to cut at least an inch around and under a fuzzy patch, take the knife out of the mold, and wrap the good parts of your food with the new cover. In either case, you want to cut at least an inch around the contaminated patch, since you want to try and remove as many of the spores and contaminants as possible, says Dr. Craggs-Dino.
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If you have contaminated bread, you are safer throwing away the entire loaf, since the roots of the mold may be spreading unnoticed by the naked eye. In softer foods, such as bread, these roots are much easier to penetrate into the bread–even when mold seems localized in just one area. Depending on the food, the mold may seep deeply into its kernels using a set of roots called hyphae, which spread extremely easily through soft foods, such as bread. With foods such as fruits, bread, and soft cheeses and vegetables, mold permeates foods such as fruits, which are unsafe to eat (seriously, not even slightly).
With harder foods, such as carrots, strawberries, or harder cheeses, Aranda says mold does not permeate quite as easily, so mold is likely only present in areas that are visible. Hard foods, such as salami, carrots, and hard cheeses, may be saved if the mold that is visible is cut away, because its roots cannot travel through harder foods, such as salami, as fast. Mold cannot easily get into some harder cheeses, harder salami, harder fruits and vegetables, compared to softer foods, according to USDA.
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Mold can develop deep roots, according to the USDA, and eating a soft moldy food–even one that has been cut off its obvious moldy parts–can be hazardous to your health. Because mold can easily spread on soft foods due to how they grow — be they bread, cheese, meat, or dips — you need to throw them away ASAP. It is not possible to tell what mold is growing on your bread simply by looking at it, so the best thing to do is to assume that it is bad for you and do not eat it (1). While it is true you might be lucky and get a benign species of mold on your bread, it is nearly impossible to tell the difference between a good and bad mould, and this threat applies to any food that is been contaminated.
You might be wondering if the vague patch of mold is safe to eat, just scrubbing it away, or if the rest of the loaf is fine to eat as long as there is no visible mold. Even if you see mold just around the edges of one piece of bread, the mold spores and hyphal filaments already have penetrated all over the loaf.
By heating bread, you are creating an environment that allows the mold spores to spread more quickly. Keeping the bread in a cool, dry environment, such as a freezer, helps keep the mold from growing. Heat and moisture promote mold growth, so adequate storage is your best protection against mold on your bread.
Preservatives and other ingredients, and specific methods for bread handling and storage, can prevent mold growth. Summary Mold gives bread an off-flavor, can cause allergies, and can cause harmful infections – especially if you have a weak immune system.
Do not Try to Salvage Moldy Bread The U.S. Department of Agricultures Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA) recommends that you throw out the whole loaf of bread if it has developed mold (1). While you should not eat bread with mold on it, Catherine Zeratsky, R.D., L.D., notes in Mayo Clinics blog that you can trim the mold from solid foods such as hard cheeses and eat them the same way you would normally. Betty Feng also said throwing away an entire bag of bread (which might have been a mold-spore-breeding site) isnat necessarily a bad choice, either. She also loves using stale bread to make breadcrumbs, cutting it into cubes, tossed with olive oil, and baking in the oven.
You may get a case of sick after accidently eating those blobs, but it is more likely that the mold tastes icky, rather than because there is some specific toxin there, says Rudolph Bedford.
How long will it take to get sick from mouldy bread?
The likelihood is that you’ll get sick after consuming mouldy bread within a few hours after you’ve eaten it that you’ll get sick. This is very unlikely to occur, however, and usually only occurs when someone consumes a large amount of mouldy bread over a prolonged period of time.
What should I do if I ate mouldy bread?
As far as your health is concerned, swallowing the fuzzy green stuff is not likely to cause any harm to you. It is probably the awful thing about eating mould that you realize that it has been in your body for a while. Despite the fact that you might gag, being completely grossed out is usually the worst thing that can happen if you experience it.
Is slightly moldy bread OK to eat?
No, eating stale bread is not safe. Even a small amount of mold on a loaf of bread indicates that it is likely contaminated throughout. Because bread is a soft food, mold spores can easily enter it and quickly spread.