this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] Gammelfisch@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

I believe the French have cheese with maggots in it. Would this balance the bread mold?

[–] Tiger666@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 hours ago

Sardinia is nasty for that cheese. Its also illegal in the EU and is traded on the black market in Europe (The cheese not Sardinia).

[–] m0stlyharmless@lemmy.zip 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

I’m pretty sure that cheese is from Italy.

Edit: it’s apparently also from parts of France.

[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 47 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Okay, but how many times did he not keel over?

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 10 points 19 hours ago

Some of those times, he probably ingested enough ergot alkaloids to see God.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 11 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

And how mouldy was it, sounds like this guy was just eating the entire thing. Not just cutting the visible bit off. Dosage is an important factor in poisoning. Small quantities of cyanide are completely fine to consume.

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 6 points 17 hours ago
[–] Avicenna@programming.dev 7 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

how do we even know it was the bread? maybe it was vaccine poisoning

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 9 points 19 hours ago

Wait, I had three vaccines for breakfast? Should I be worried?

[–] Rhoeri@lemmy.world 7 points 22 hours ago

This person maths.

[–] 58008@lemmy.world 87 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Food is so weird. Bread becomes toxic waste after 8 minutes of being opened, but there's probably some cheese species that gets fermented up the asshole of a mountain llama for 6 months, being stuffed back in after every bowel movement, and is still edible (if you're into that sort of thing) after 400 years of being left in a dank cave amongst the frothing remains of a rotting gerbil cemetery.

[–] BanMe@lemmy.world 35 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Cheese is weird because someone had to be like, well let's go ahead and store some milk in the stomach of an animal, but also they forgot about it under a chair for 3 months and then, upon finding it, thought, "well let's have a go anyway, despite it changing forms." And then eventually someone realized if you stuck it in certain caves it became delicious. So much human history just in that one food product there.

[–] Quibblekrust@thelemmy.club 1 points 7 hours ago

Starvation is a great motivator!

[–] axx@slrpnk.net 16 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I think one theory is that it was central Asian horse-riding societies who started carrying milk on horseback, in saddlebags made out of animal bladders. The motion of the riding and  the rennet left in the bladders churned the milk and turned it into cheese.

I remember also reading on a science magazine's site this possibility that the first cheese made by humans was more of yeast-based preparation, without animal milk, but i can't find the article mentioning that anymore.

[–] deHaga@feddit.uk 5 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Isn't it butter if it's churned?

[–] jhdeval@lemmy.world 6 points 19 hours ago

It is but adding renet causes the milk fat to coagulate. Once that is done 90 degrees abpit the right temp for most cheese. The action of it moving it will cause tue curds to be broken down. The problem with this theory is the whey. Part of cheesemaking is removing the curd from the whey to allow the moisture to be removed. In a sealed vessel it cant go anywhere.

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 36 points 1 day ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

There's a ~~reindeer~~sheep cheese that is considered a delicacy that has actual maggots in it. Another orange cheese that has fucking mites! I don't mind my stinky cheese, but I'm not eating anything moving.

[–] WeirdyTrip@lemmy.blahaj.zone 23 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Casu marzu, "rotten cheese", NSFL. This is sheep's milk, not reindeer, but still. Horrifying.

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 4 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

For those not in the know, "rotten" puts it lightly, this cheese is made specifically to breed fly maggots which are eaten alive with the cheese.

It's not particularly legal to sell or manufacture for consumption due to the fact that yes, the maggots can in fact try to chew through your stomach and intestines before they die from digestion and cause severe intestinal distress.

They ain't the big, chewy grubs that Timon and Pumba might eat either, they're piles of teeny, tiny crawling masses of mini-maggots, so extremely horrifying. Nurgle cheese.

[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 1 day ago

Thank you for warning me not to click this.

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[–] greedytacothief@lemmy.dbzer0.com 72 points 1 day ago (6 children)

So I can't actually find anything from a quick search that tells me what "bread poisoning" is. Searches show results for both moldy bread as well as ergotism. Just about every source on the Internet tells me that eating a bunch of moldy bread should just give you a bad case of shits or vomits. But if someone is immunocompromised or has gut issues it could be worse.

But if this was ergot poisoning that's different and doesn't have much to do with ordinary bread mold.

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

It's a meme, but sadly our whole society seems to get their educations entirely from memes exchanged between racists on twitter.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 4 points 20 hours ago

Saint Anthony's fire, causes hallucinations!

[–] filcuk@lemmy.zip 7 points 22 hours ago

I have read that mold can be dangerous because it can cause cumulative damage in the body over time.
I don't have a source, hopefully I'm not regurgitating some bs.

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[–] marcos@lemmy.world 88 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's a conversation I've had more than once with my parents:

-- Doing X is fine! Everybody did it in my time and we grew up just fine!

-- Didn't that friend of yours die because of it?

-- Yeah, but he's only a single person, and everybody did X...

[–] Psythik@lemmy.world 41 points 1 day ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (2 children)

Anytime I hear this argument from someone, I tell them to go look up the term, "survivorship bias".

I mean we figured this shit out during WWII, FFS. People need to keep up.

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[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 60 points 1 day ago (5 children)

But grampa was such a fungi

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[–] PrimeMinisterKeyes@leminal.space 128 points 1 day ago (8 children)

Reminder that, per Wikipedia, aflatoxins - the poisons in molds - "are among the most carcinogenic substances known."
Furthermore, aflatoxin B~1~ can permeate through the skin and its LD~50~ can be as low as 300 µg/kg.

[–] fishsayhelo@lemmy.ml 48 points 1 day ago (2 children)

not all moulds though, it should be noted

[–] SpongyAneurysm@feddit.org 10 points 19 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Tabula_stercore@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

The only thing stopping a bad mold is a good mold

[–] zedgeist@lemmy.world 53 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What is this, some mycologistic hate speech?

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[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 160 points 1 day ago (14 children)

Even if penicillin, it tastes awful, and if you don’t need penicillin does it actually help you at all?

I bit bread like this once and I can still vividly taste it.

[–] logicbomb@lemmy.world 87 points 1 day ago (3 children)

if you don’t need penicillin does it actually help you at all?

No, it has virtually no chance to help you, and most probably can only hurt you.

First, it kills indiscriminately. If you're not sick, what are you killing? Your own healthy gut flora. That's what.

Second, what if you are slightly ill? Guess what? It still probably won't help. Doctors don't just throw penicillin at you in random amounts. They prescribe a specific dose that has been shown to be effective. Having one untested dose of unknown quantity isn't going to help.

Third, when you're given antibiotics, you are told to take it over a number of days, and to take the entire amount, even if you feel better. They do this for several reasons, but one of the reasons is that, if you only kill some of the bacteria, but not enough of them, the remaining bacteria have a small chance to evolve to become resistant to antibiotics. By taking antibiotics without the guidance of a doctor, you have a small chance of making yourself even more ill with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. I want to emphasize that this is a very small chance, but unlikely things will happen when given enough chances.

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[–] Flamekebab@piefed.social 32 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Whilst I don't eat mouldy bread intentionally (as in, it will have happened without me noticing on occasion) what's the actual potentially bad thing that happens if one does? Specifically?

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

I once at a huge slice of boston creme pie from a local deli, I got nearly to the end before I flipped it over and saw the bottom crust was entirely black mold.

I had one of the worst stomach aches of my life for about 6 hours that night and enough gas to power a small town, but no lasting harm. I was also a teenager so likely my digestive system was nigh invulnerable.

It should be understood that most fungus won't survive in your body, but it does produce toxins. Those toxins don't have a hard line between harmless and toxic, so the small amounts of spores you ingest every day do nothing, but eating a whole moldy bread slice could make you pretty sick.

[–] barbedbeard@lemmy.ml 31 points 1 day ago

There are more types of fungus than any other type of life. Lots of them are mostly harmless. Some of them are a little toxic. Some others are very much toxic. Some others will cause allergies, fungal infection, rare metabolic disorders or all together.

It's the worst kind of lottery, most likely nothing will happen but if something happens it will be pretty uncomfortable. IT IS NOT WORTH IT!

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