Good Mold Vs Bad Mold

We have all heard about how dangerous mold can be right? So what's the deal with moldy foods that taste so good? Let's talk about Gorgonzola people? How good is that? But at the most basic level it is moldy cheese! I set out to investigate why certain molds are not just safe to eat but also delicious!
The basic answer is that there are good molds and there are bad molds. The good molds provide things that are actually good for us for example Penicillin, Black Tea and blue cheeses like Gorgonzola. All blue cheeses are made with a specific type of mold : Penicillium Roqueforti. This mold is created by leaving rye bread loaves in the caves of Roquefort along with the ripening cheeses. When the bread becomes completely moldy, it is powdered and the resulting power is injected into the cheeses. This results in those green-blue veins of mold you see growing in the cheese. Other cheeses such as Brie and Camembert also have mold, but it is a white surface mold.


Bad molds on the other hand are known to secret toxins such as mycotoxins. These are poisonous and can eat away at human tissue. Mold is known to cause skin irritation, respiratory problems and other illnesses of varying degrees of severity.


The main issue is that mold growing on your food (by which I mean food that isn't intended to be moldy) is growing in an uncontrolled environment. You have no idea which species of mold are there whereas with blue cheeses etc, you know it has purposely been infected with safe mold.
Best throw out that moldy bread and stick to your Gorgonzola!