It depends on how soft the food is. Mold sends threads well below what you can see in soft, high-moisture produce, so a moldy peach or tomato goes in the bin whole. In a box of berries, throw out the moldy fruit and anything touching it, then use the rest that day. Firm produce is different: with something hard and dense like a carrot or a cabbage, USDA guidance is to cut at least an inch around and below the spot and use the rest.
What to check
🌱
Soft fruit and berries: discard the moldy one and its neighbors, because spores spread through a box. Check the stem scar and the blossom end first, since those are the fruit's natural wounds and the usual entry points.
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Firm vegetables: cut generously around the spot and keep the knife out of the mold itself, so you do not carry it into the good flesh.
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Avoidsniffing moldy produce closely to check. Breathing in spores is the part actually worth avoiding. And never taste something to find out.
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Notemost mold on produce is a spoilage organism rather than something that produces a toxin. The reason the guidance above is strict anyway is that you cannot tell which is which by looking, at a kitchen counter, with the naked eye. The rule is conservative because identification is impossible, not because every mold is dangerous.
Common mistakerinsing the mold off and carrying on. Washing removes what you can see and leaves the threads underneath. When in doubt, throw it out.
You do not have to eat the loss. Almost every retailer will replace a moldy or rotten piece of produce without an argument, because waste is built into how a produce department is run. People eat around mold mostly because they do not want to lose the money. Take it back instead.
Written by the team behind RIPE, a free app that reads a photo of the whole produce pile and rings the ripest ones. Every cue above is one you can check with your own hands, and it all works with no app at all.
Now on Google Play
The whole bin, in one photo.
You just read the cue for one piece. RIPE reads a photo of the entire display, draws numbered rings on the ones worth taking, and tells you why in the same plain words these guides use. Then it remembers what you brought home and nudges you before it turns.
It claims only what a camera can actually see. Every verdict ends by handing the last check back to your hands, which is the part these guides just taught you.
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