When To Eat Moldy Food

More likely than not, you've probably opened up the fridge to a moldy piece of pizza at least once in your life. In situations involving moldy food, we're faced with a difficult choice: should we toss everything into the trash, effectively ruining lunch, or should we carve off the fuzzy parts, salvage the remainder, and hope for the best?

First, stop and ask yourself, "Just how safe is this?" Well, it depends on what kind of food you're eating and what type of mold is growing on it. Most of the time, mold is impossible to identify, and sometimes it's not visible to the naked eye; there still may be contamination even after you cut off the blatantly fuzzy parts. Therefore, you are left to decide based on food what you're eating.

Photo by Gabrielle Taylor

Foods that are okay (once you cut off the visibly moldy portions):

Hard or dense foods like:

-Hard cheese (parmesan, cheddar, asiago)
-Salami
-Hard veggies and fruits (carrots, apples, bell peppers, cauliflower, broccoli)

Photo by JW

Foods that are NOT okay:

Soft foods like:

-Pizza
-Soft fruit (strawberries, apricots)
-Bread
-Cake
-Cottage cheese
-Yogurt
-Bacon
-Butter
-Jelly
-Hot dogs

So you probably shouldn't eat that slice of pizza, no matter how much you're craving for it. A good rule of thumb to follow: when it doubt, toss it out.

Photo by Roe Ethridge

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