What happens if you accidentally eat mold?

We’ve all been there. You’re eating a sandwich you’ve just made, and suddenly you notice a little spot of mold. No big deal, right? Some folks think you can just pick it off. Or, maybe you’re like me, and seeing any signs of mold on something just completely kills your appetite. Well, if you’ve ever wondered what happens if you eat mold, here’s what you need to know.

For all intents and purposes, consuming mold is usually frowned upon. While you can usually partake of a couple of bites of moldy food without much issue, some mold is actually extremely harmful to the human body. Further, even the most benign of mold can lead to fungal infections in people who are immunocompromised.

For the most part, eating a couple of bites of mold isn’t too bad. Your stomach acid can easily kill the mold, breaking it down and making it harmless. However, depending on the mold and how much you eat, there could be other things to take into account. And, just because you only see a little mold on the surface of your food doesn’t mean there isn’t much more beneath the surface.

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Eating moldy foods can make you extremely sick. Image source: leelakajonkij/Adobe

But what if you just cut off the mold? There isn’t any issue, right? Well, not exactly. Mold is essentially microscopic fungi, which means it is made up of spores, roots, and stalks. Just because you can only see a couple of spores doesn’t mean the roots haven’t spread throughout the entirety of the food item.

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As such, eating moldy food is never a good idea, even if you pick it off. A lot of this comes down to the fact that some molds can produce what we call mycotoxins—a type of poison that can make you extremely sick. Some of these mycotoxins can even be potentially carcinogenic if you ar exposed to them in low doses over a long period of time, too. So try to avoid eating any food with mold on it.

Additionally, exposure to mycotoxins is extremely difficult to pinpoint, especially if you’ve been exposed to them for a long time. This makes eating mold exceptionally dangerous, even if you don’t do it often. But what about mold in certain types of cheeses?

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Well, thankfully, eating mold in blue cheese isn’t all that dangerous. In fact, these types of mold are actually perfectly safe to eat and are even planted into the cheese, deliberately in many cases, to help develop their trademark flavor. However, eating moldy cheese that isn’t intended to be eaten that way can be dangerous, so don’t do it.

So, the ultimate moral of the story is don’t eat mold unless the food you’re eating has been carefully cultivated to include it—like these new moldy food dishes that are being served in some restaurants.

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