Question: If you eat mold will you get sick?

Ciarán O'Brien answered on 20 Nov 2014:

It really depends on the mould. Some moulds are fine to eat, in fact the blue-green mould in blue cheese is what gives it such a strong flavour. Mushrooms are another kind of mould, most of them are delicious. Well, they’re delicious if you like mushrooms, I guess. Oh, yes, moulds are another name for fungi, so that’s why I’m talking about mushrooms…

Other moulds are less edible. Some are downright dangerous. If you’re immunocompromised (Fancy way of saying your immune system isn’t working well, say after an operation or you’ve gotten very ill), or you’ve been exposed to a huge amount of the stuff, some moulds will be able to infect you. Moulds like warm damp places, so usually the infection will be in your sinuses or your lungs, or your digestive tract. Have you ever had athlete’s foot? It’s an unpleasant infection where a mould grows in-between your toes and starts breaking down the skin there, very painful. I imagine an infection in your nose would be just as nasty.

If that weren’t enough, some of those moulds produce toxins. We call them mycotoxins, and they can do some weird and nasty things; freaky hallucinations; memory loss; and if you eat enough, death. That’s why it’s never a good idea to go eating mushrooms you haven’t bought in a grocery shop. Unless you’re an expert on mushrooms, you might end up eating something that could kill you, or give you such horrible waking dreams that you wished it had just killed you!

But I’m making things sound worse than they are. Most of the moulds you encounter are fairly harmless and quite edible. But if you don’t know what type of mould it is, it’s best to be safe and avoid it or kill it off with a good fungicide.