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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They’re everywhere. Always.
Your average cubic meter of air has 500 mold spores and 100,000 bacteria/virus particles. The minute those spores and bacteria hit something edible they’re going to start to multiply.
You can delay it (freezing, drying, smoking, salting/sugaring to create an osmotic effect etc), fight it (by for example introducing friendly bacteria/spores. Like kim chi or blue cheese) but the only way to hold off mold/bacteria indefinitely is to hermetically seal the container and then kill everything inside (canning. In which case the food only goes bad when it chemically dissolves).
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