#Sorry OP for adding an essay onto your post lol

[bumblebeebats]

For things like hard cheeses and firm vegetables (like carrots, cabbage, etc), mold has a hard time penetrating very far in, so they're still alright to eat so long as you cut off the entire visible moldy area and at least 1 inch around it. Also, put it in a new container/wrap afterwards, and do NOT let that knife drag through/spread the mold. (I recommend checking out the USDA guidelines on this - note that in most cases, they recommend totally discarding food with any visible trace of mold.)

THIS is because, for any foods that are soft or moist (think fruit, bread, cooked pasta or other leftovers) the actual mold extends far beyond what you see on the surface. You know how mushrooms seem to "pop out of nowhere" in your garden, because most of the actual organism is part of a largely-invisible root network spreading underground? Yeah, mold does the same thing:

The part you can see of mold is the FRUITING BODY. That also means that if you can see mold on the end of a bagged loaf of bread, there is ALREADY a sizeable root network beneath the surface! AND, it's sending out invisible spores, meaning that that loaf is been sitting in a dutch oven of harmful mold spores! Not good!!! Go directly to trash, do not collect $200, do not even OPEN that bag bc breathing mold spores isn't good for you either!

Also:

If something went really bad in your vegetable drawer, then mold spores will have settled on everything inside; wash/wipe down everything thoroughly and keep a VERY close eye on foods that were nearby in the next few days.

If something went really bad in a tupperware container, you may want to just throw out the whole container - plastic IS porous and becomes more so with age, so especially if there are visibly degraded portions on the surface or pasta sauce staining, for example, those mold roots could have penetrated into the plastic! Bad!

"But I've eaten moldy bread a million times before and I was fine" Yeah, those times!! There are MANY kinds of mold - some are pretty much harmless to ingest in small amounts, some will just make you feel like shit for a couple of days, and some will cause you permanent liver damage or kill you. It's not worth it.

[kisses you tenderly on the lips while holding you like my lover] don’t eat any food with mold on it even if you cut the moldy part off ok?