Cut the mold off, it will be alright...

“Do you remember your Mum cutting the mold off bread and using the rest, you know letting you eat it?” Clare asked me, I must have been distracted or something and replied “No don’t be silly”. But whilst toasting some bread today,it must have sparked some distant memory of my Mum stating: “Cut the mold off, it will be alright!”.

Can you imagine that, a parent allowing their child to consume food that’s has been trimmed off a piece of mold! To have any substance in your kitchen that is moldy beggar’s belief. Call social services – call the Food Standards Agency – CALL EUROPE! Yet (and I think this is the conversation Clare wanted with me “Sorry for being distracted”) I can remember vividly not wearing a seatbelt in my Dads Mini van (He had taken it in payment for some work) and his Talbot Samba! (Sounds like an exotic disease Talbot Samba Syndrome!).

Is it an education thing? I would not just cut the side off a moldy piece of bread because I know (well I think I do?) that the bacteria in the mold can be carried in spores in the air and kill you or give you some sort of dysentery or botulism? But the practice of allowing my children to eat substandard food - does not compute.

So do we just choose not to do this ancient practice of mold removal because we know its not right? Are our parents still in the practice of mold removal? Do we need to tell them? After all that generation has a habit of ignoring Best Before dates – based on post war rationing ideologies. Should we pin the “older” generations down on mass and explain that the clever men in white coats have been even more clever than the men in white coats of previous generations and the Best Before date depicted on the packaging is not there to make the product look official, it is in point of fact there because if you try to use the product after this point in time it is going to do you some form of harm. One of the numerous genetically modified ingredients in the product will degrade and you are going to die if you eat it past its best before date. Would they listen? Apparently I dont know I am born. At least tell them that eating moldy food that is past its Best Before date is not best!

Trust me I have had first hand experience of this issue, involving beautiful Fish and Chips and dodgy out of date Tomato Ketchup. I am still traumatised over this to this date and can not have Fish and Chips with tomato ketchup. This is about two years after the offence of nearly poisoning me had occurred – I am traumatised to not want to consume Tomato Ketchup – an offence similar to a war crime! Not quite a violation of my human rights - but close.

So lets tell them: NO don’t cut the mold off the moldy bread! Put the moldy bread in the bin. Well, compost the bread and place the plastic wrapper (do you remember the bread bags with little holes in and the smell!!) in the appropriate recycling bin. Make sure you remove the paper label that goes in a different bin...