It’s been officially a couple of weeks since the last national holiday, but we are still dealing with food from Christmas. If someone in your household happens to have a sweet tooth—or likes to actively boycott your efforts to reduce your processed sugar intake and keep diabetes at bay—you probably are still surrounded by Christmas chocolates, tin pop corn, and those delicious cookies your great aunt sent you.
But what about the food in the fridge? We know it’s been more than a fortnight since put those leftovers in that tupperware, but that cake was delicious, and it would be such a pity to trash it… Beside, it’s only turning green in this teeny tiny corner, and we can easily scrape it off, right?
We are sorry to rain on anyone’s parade, but no matter how delicious that food a week ago, and how much you pinky promise not to forget about those tuppers at the back of the fridge again, the truth is that you should really bin it.
It’s not worth it
Mario Sanchez Rosagro, one of the most popular Spanish-speaking nutritionists on Instagram, has been very vocal about food safety on social media. Even if the food was expensive of we feel lazy about putting up some other dinner instead, he’s been very strict about the issue in his profile.
“You cannot see the real danger,” he says. And he’s not wrong. Those little specks of grey and green are just the tip of the iceberg. If you are seen it, you have to mentally imagine that mold travelling through all the food container, polluting every single square inch with invisible threads —at least to the human eye without a microscope.
With mold, you cannot see the real danger
The speck of green is just he visible part, the reproductive system that is trying to disperse spores into other materials —this is why you should not sniff any food or ingredients which might have gone bad.
As a result, Mario Sanchez Rosagro strongly advises tossing the whole thing if you see mold on these kinds of items, instead of trying to slice away the bad section.
Toxins that can make you really sick
Looking past the gross factor, the actual danger comes from mycotoxins, which are invisible chemicals created by some molds that can be poisonous. You might not feel any pain, but you are still eating these toxins and they are harming your system.
Cooking won’t get rid of these substances, and they quietly build up in your liver, potentially leading to lasting injury. Since they don’t make you sick right away, eating them over and over is particularly risky.
If you catch a green speck on a slice or piece of food, the spores have probably already traveled through the entire package. Basically, anything else sitting near it could be infected too, even if it looks perfectly fine to the naked eye.
So yes, cut your losses, assume the food is not edible, and just trash it. If your food spoils over and over again before you get the chance to eat it—which happens a lot to people with ADHD or extremely busy schedules—invest in a magnetic whiteboard and write down all the produce and leftovers you have in the fridge. The act of writing it down (and being able to see the list without opening the refrigerator) will help you recall better.
If that doesn’t work…well, putting your leftovers directly in the freezer is a viable option. If you straight up freeze them, and the thaw and reheat them in the microwave or air fryer, they won’t have a chance of going moldy.