No matter how you store food (unless it’s in the freezer), it always get moldy eventually. How does this happen? Mold is a fungus, and fungi spread through spores, right? So are these mold spores just everywhere all the time, looking for food? If so, then does that mean that mold is on everything we eat, but it’s just not toxic until you can see it? And why does refrigeration slow down this process?
In: 670
They’re like tiny invisible seeds waiting for the right conditions to grow. When food is exposed to air and moisture, like in your kitchen, these spores can land and grow into visible mold. Refrigeration slows this down by making it harder for mold to thrive in the cold and dry environment. It doesn’t eliminate mold entirely, but it helps keep it in check for longer.
Mold spores are all over everything. Even your skin. They are also everywhere in the air.
Warm temperatures help them rapidly grow and colonize and they go through their life cycle of replicating. Cold temperatures slow them down or stop them completely from replicating.
“So are these mold spores just everywhere all the time, looking for food?”
Yes, they are and the vast majority of them are harmless to people.
They are everywhere.
You can leave some flour out on the counter for a day, then add water, seal it and the yeast that is just floating around in side your home which got onto the flour will begin to ferment it.
The more you learn about food safety, the more you begin to accept the unhappy truth that *everything* is covered in dirt and shit and garbage and all sorts of slimy stuff you don’t want to think about. Most food safety is just an unending effort to keep stuff clean long enough to eat it. (And to cook it in such a way that the worst germs get killed.)
Fortunately, our digestive system is built pretty tough. We can eat a lot of nasty stuff and our bodies can filter out the bad and keep the good with great success. But there are a few germs which can hurt us badly so we have to be careful. Good food safety is mostly a matter of keeping those dangerous bugs at bay.
Mold is just one of many little pieces of gunk that are sitting on everything right now. Mold can be nasty, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. You can make some great cheese with it. And beer is nice.
The farming sector relies heavily on antimicrobial agents, and is knee deep in pathogenic filth which would survive a nuclear apocalypse.
The way that some things go off or do not go off is more than suspicious.
I left a green bell pepper on a shelf for nearly four years when I moved into a house, found it when I moved out… and it had just gone a tiny bit wrinkly. Very odd.
Aerial plankton. One of my favourite terms to describe all the mold, spores, bacteria, etc floating around.
Why the freezer stops it: Fungus are a life form, their metabolism doesn’t work in the cold, so they don’t grow. And they can be toxic before you can see it, they’re present in the entire food, not only where it’s visible (that is only where the spores are being made). But normally, they’re only toxic when they reach a large size, and when they reach that size they have grown the frutification body (the visible part of the mold).
Leaving a mixture of flour and water out in open air is how you start a sourdough starter. Yeast and fungi are *everywhere*.
I live in the desert and sometimes my bread stuff goes stale and dry without ever getting mold on it so it doesn’t always get to food
Latest Answers