DD put mouldy tomato puree in chilli - she hoiked it straight out so it’s fine right?

[IHeartKingThistle]

She’s just started cooking once a week so I REALLY don’t want to discourage her. It was just the cap that was mouldy and she spooned it all out again before stirring it in. If she boils up the chilli really well we can still eat it right?!

I don’t mean she stirred in the puree, I mean she took all the puree out before she had a chance to stir it in. So the vast majority of it won’t be in the pan. You’d eat it, right?

What did she spoon out? Was it the mouldy bit?

Of course I'd eat it

Yeah, I couldn't get worked up about it! Eat away.

All the puree including the mouldy bit

actually I’m not even sure any mould made it in, it was in the lid

Yes I’d probably eat that. I deliberately didn’t read the back of my tomato puree tube recently as I knew it had been open a few weeks. I’m still here!

Yes no one ever died from gone off tomatoes. It will be fine.

Teaching her about good food hygiene is also important.
I wouldn’t eat this because the thought of the mould would put me right off.

Yeah, possibly wouldn’t have even spooned out of it was just the lid 🫣

Scientists have discovered that hoiking mouldy food out of a dish quickly means the germs are unable to travel. Look up the paper "Hoiking - our secret weapon against bacteria"

It's not like mouldy rice which is toxic. Mouldy tomatoe lid passata is kind of gross but won't hurt even if you did eat it**. It especially won't hurt if it was all scooped out and presumably the sauce cooked. Any stray mould spores would be killed by heat. But I doubt there's any in there and it wouldn't hurt you anyway. So it's triple fine.

**Free kimchi really. I hate kimchi. But I know it can't hurt me

Beer, bread, vinegars, wine. Most moulds are fine. Even dangerous moulds aren't heat resistant.

No chance. That’s gross

None of this is accurate.

Invisible Roots: mould has microscopic, root-like threads called hyphae that extend deep beneath the surface of the paste. Even if you scoop out the visible fuzzy spots, the rest of the paste is likely already contaminated.
Toxins: Certain moulds produce harmful byproducts called mycotoxins, which can be toxic to your liver and other internal organs.
Cooking Won't Help: Mycotoxins are heat-resistant, meaning boiling or cooking the tomato paste will not destroy or neutralise them

Invisible roots - yes, in bread etc or in mouldy food the mould goes far beyond the visible spores. However, while fast growing it will not have had time to shoot out those roots and contaminated the rest of the dish in the few seconds it took OPs daughter to scoop it out. I will accept there may well have been mouldy in the OK looking paste. But OP tried to get rid of it all rather than doing a Theresa May jam scraping.

Some mould does indeed create toxins. Eg the rice mould I mentioned can make you very sick. However, the common moulds that would grow on things like tomato paste doesn't. Also, even with someth very gross like rice mould, the amount of toxins that could transfer from it touching your food wouldn't be enought to hurt you. It's not like salmonella bacteria where you worry about a small amount of salmonella growing to more in your stomach. Toxins don't self replicate. Rice mould stinks though and gives of very strong this is BAD vibes.

Mould is not heat resistant. Tiny traces of mould (including that floating in the air) can't contaminate your food and multiply in it as it boils. Large amounts of toxins would be bad because, as you say, the toxins won't boil away. But there is no mechanisms for, during the brief period the paste was in the pan, for large amounts of mycotoxin to leap out of it into the pan and then grow to large levels. The toxins produced by some kinds of moulds are not themselves alive. Also they are unlikely to be in tomatoes paste.

The points about the mycotoxins are why you shouldn't eat rice that's more than 36 hours old. Even if you heat it to kill the germs because the amount of toxins can still be bad. But it's not relevant here. And in the case of old rice you likely wouldn't see the mould anyway. It's a different thing.

The roots refer to contamination in the rest of the tube of tomato paste.

Mycotoxins can be present in mould within a tube of something like tomato paste.

They can be heat resistant.

The big danger with toxins like these is in consumption over time. OP is teaching her daughter to ignore mould. Over a lifetime of cooking, that is not a good idea.

The official advice is to avoid eating mouldy foods. It’s supported by evidence, and unless you’re very poor and have no alternative, not difficult advice to follow.

Is this tomato puree in a tube? It's never occurred to me that that would go mouldy. I think I'd just prefer not to know (too late now, I know).

I'd eat it quite happily. Most likely no mould got into the chilli .

Same here, lids sometimes get a bit mouldy, its fine

I’d absolutely eat that.

Perfectly fine. Most mould is harmless anyway.

I did a very similar thing just last week, with harissa. We all ate the dish and were fine

I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise this had continued! Update is I didn’t eat it but everyone else did, and DH had leftovers for lunch the next day. They were fine and I was hungry.

Solid proof for hoiking there!