Fun Facts About Moldy Bread

It's a common occurrence: you buy a loaf of bread, only eat part of it with dinner, and put it in a bag to eat later. Then, you forget about it. When you remember it, you pull up the bag to find that it is covered in mold. Beyond the fact that you can't eat the bread, there are some fun facts about moldy bread you may not know.

Microscopic

• The mold you see on your bread aren't singular organisms, like an individual tree in the forest or flower outside of your house. Rather, mold consists of an accumulation of microscopic fungi. This means that when you can see some mold, what you are actually seeing is a colony of thousands (or even more) of individual fungus organisms. These colonies don't just sit on the surface, either. Rather, they have roots that extend down into the bread like plants have roots that go down into the soil.

Travel

• If you have ever seen a dandelion covered in individual white strands (called florets), you have seen these florets blow off the plant head and take to the air. Each of these florets is actually a dandelion seed. When they land, they can grow into new dandelions. The mold you see on your bread can spread in a similar fashion. Fungi produce spores, which they release into the air. When the spores land in food, they will take root and grow new fungus which will in turn produce new spores. In this way, mold will grow exponentially over a piece of unattended bread sealed in a bag.

Contagion

• Mold isn't picky about the food on which it will grow. For example, the spores from the mold growing on your bread can land and take root in cheese, pasta or meat just as easily as another loaf of bread. This is why you need to throw away moldy food immediately: your moldy bread could infect all your other food with mold as well.

Nature's Garbage Men

• While bread mold may be a nuisance to you, it actually plays an important role in nature. The bread on which the mold grows contains nutrients that help life, both human and plant, grow. If you aren't going to use those nutrients, then nature wants them back. Mold recycles these nutrients back into nature by "eating" the bread and consuming those nutrients. When the fungus eventually finds its way back to the soil, the nutrients they carry become part of the soil for plants to use.