I ate it, but should I have? (moldy sweet potato edition)

September 21, 2020 3:53 PM

I made a curry today using two large sweet potatoes that both had little bits of whitish/greyish mold growing at the very tips. I cut off an inch or more of potato past the mold zone and proceeded to cook, because I really wanted those damn sweet potatoes and the grocery store is scary these days. Now I'm googling and seeing all sorts of things about hepatoxicity from the kind of mold that grows on sweet potatoes.

I have eaten probably 1/3 of a potato's worth of curry already. I'm reluctant to throw away food because I don't have a lot of money and, as previously mentioned, the grocery store is scary due to COVID. Do I need to throw the rest of the curry out? Do I need to worry about potato poisoning as it stands?

Please assuage my fears and/or advise me on how to mitigate whatever harm I've already done.

posted by cabbage raccoon to Food & Drink (11 answers total)

This wouldn't even register on my radar of things to be concerned about with food.
posted by sanka at 3:58 PM on September 21, 2020 [49 favorites]

I’m pretty careful about food prep and have cut the end off of a moldy sweet potato, scrubbed/peeled, cooked, and eaten it many times. If the rest of it is not soft or gross, I wouldn’t give it a second thought.
posted by tchemgrrl at 4:40 PM on September 21, 2020 [14 favorites]

I’ve done this before and I’m still here to talk about it!
posted by Jubey at 4:54 PM on September 21, 2020 [3 favorites]

I have done this over a hundred times, I'm sure (I eat a lot of sweet potatoes), and I'm totally fine!
posted by LeeLanded at 4:58 PM on September 21, 2020 [3 favorites]

A rule of thumb with mould: if it's a hard thing, you should be ok but if the thing is soft (like yogurt or ricotta) there could be mould tendrils that you can't see, so bin all of it. Sweet potato: totally fine, especially if you cut a bit clear.
posted by freethefeet at 5:00 PM on September 21, 2020 [11 favorites]

Yep I would have eaten it no problem.
posted by saucysault at 5:03 PM on September 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

Wouldn't consider this at all a problem after the knife cut the mold off.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 5:09 PM on September 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you all for your words of potato reassurance!
posted by cabbage raccoon at 5:12 PM on September 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

Your common sense is utterly sound here.
posted by desuetude at 5:12 PM on September 21, 2020 [2 favorites]

If it helps, I never peel my sweet potatoes and I'm pretty careless so I've accidentally missed and eaten small moldy spots a few times, and have never been harmed aside from an awful taste. So even if you had actually eaten any, I don't think the mold is necessarily toxic to the degree that you're thinking (though I still do not recommend eating the moldy parts).
posted by randomnity at 7:15 PM on September 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

I have done this and then fed said sweet potato to my baby. Ya good!
posted by St. Peepsburg at 8:11 PM on September 21, 2020 [3 favorites]