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?
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It’s already there! It’s also all over your kitchen, but it takes a while to get to grow enough to be at dangerous levels.
Fun fact: the microbes that are responsible for making food mushy and gross and smelly are usually not the same microbes that can get you sick. However, they all grow well in similar conditions, so rotten-looking food is usually a good indicator that it also has the toxic stuff in it, too. Evolution taught us that they go hand in hand, so we learned to be repulsed by rotten food.
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