Mould on Jam

[OliveOil]

so you all need to be using tate adn lyle or billingtons sugar which is sugar cane sugar - the rest as far as i know is beet sugar...  Also cane sugar is sweeter than beet sugar.

[OliveOil]

[Melbourne12]

Unless you have a chromatograph in your kitchen, there is no way to tell the difference between beet and cane derived white sugar.  They are absolutely the same for jam making or any other practical purpose.

On a more serious matter, the things we ate and handled as children were less safe, and if you go back a generation or two, quite alarmingly so.  I can remember handling mercuric mosskiller with bare hands, and it was a yearly task as a lad to creosote sheds and fences with the most astonishingly carcinogenic stuff.  Protective clothing?  Hellooooo?

I remember later in life having a conversation with my parents, who maintained that nobody had come to any harm from this, that, and the other unhygienic practice that we now found unacceptable.  The peck of dirt argument.

Both my parents had come from large families.  Both had lost several siblings in childhood.  What did they die of?  Well, one had died after a fall, one had died of diphtheria.  But the others?  They just died.  There was no cause and effect.  It was just the way it was.

[carolinej]

WARNING....WARNING....WARNING

Stupid question coming up!

What about the mould in blue cheese? Is that a different type of mould?

cj :)

[Jeannine]

Valmarg I said the muck you ate as a child DIDN'T cause cancer in rats  LOL at least I would hope it didn't.

[Jeannine]

Caroline, the answer is yes, but don't ask me to explain the technicalities as I don't know them well enough to quote them. I do know however that some mould on cheese can be harmful. I just can't tell you which.There are so many moulds.

I eat a lot of blue cheeses, but wouldn't touch way overripe Brie which is a no no , yet John does.

I would cut the mould of hard cheese as the spores cannot penetrate far but I would't eat moulded soft cheese even if it was cut off.

XX Jeannine

[Mrs Ava]

I eat mouldy cheese, the mouldier and runnier the better.  I don't remove the rind from brie, I don't scrape the mould from cheddar.  I drink unpasturised milk, and eat as many unpasturised dairy products as I can.  I do accidently eat mouldy bread from time to time when I am left with the last slice and it isn't until I am on the last bite that I notice the blue specks.  I steralised everything for my daughter up until she was 6months old - but she was a very very ill baby and I don't know if she would be here now if I hadn't, I didn't bother sterilising anything for my son from birth and he is here and fit and strong.  I eat over ripe fruit and game that has been hanging so long it walks into the kitchen and throws itself into the pan.  My kids drop something on the floor, and the automatically pick it up and blow it and stick it back in their mouths.  We are very rarely sick, coughs and colds maybe, but properly sick, very very rarely, BUT if I open a jar or bottle of my home made preserve, and it is mouldy, I bin it.  I have plenty, it cost so little and I have heard so many horror stories that I don't think it is worth the worry, and I open another.  I think in all of my years of preserving I have only opened a couple of jars that have been iffy and binned.  Tis a funny old world, would be bloody boring if we were all the same.

[Jeannine]

I have this picture in my head of you and your family in your kitchen..priceless.

Did you ever eat worms as a kid. I did, some snotty pimply kid bet me his stamp collection for my bike, and I won!! I have never liked stamp collectors since.

XX Jeannine

[Mrs Ava]

Worse, yes I did eat worms, and mud, but mum has me on cine film eating spoon full after spoon full of North Devon beach (westward Ho!) sand.  She said my nappies were the thing of nightmares!  Daughter has tried a worm when she was little, but didn't like it wiggling.  ;D

I don't do the whole water bath thing, but I do like to hear that click as the lid gets sucked tight.  If any don't they go straight into the fridge for immediate use. 

Oh, I don't buy dented tins either.  ;D

[Oldmanofthewoods]

Watch the mouldy bread EJ - that's not good.  Very dry bread is OK, mouldy bread's a no-no.

[Larkshall]

Regarding the peck of dirt comment.
.
I used to work in a hospital and one of our nurses was part hospital staff and part District Nurse. She said she never had any problem with the Gypsy children on her patch, but the more wealthy ones were always having problems. Perhaps it was genetic but more likely the body building up a resistance to disease by being exposed to it. I have been in conditions where the only water available was contaminated by dead animals. It had to be chlorinated to make it safe. This is why all mains water in the UK is chlorinated, water reservoirs are not proof against dead animals getting into them, even if it's only a mouse or bird.

[Oldmanofthewoods]

I eat mouldy cheese, the mouldier and runnier the better.  I don't remove the rind from brie, I don't scrape the mould from cheddar.  I drink unpasturised milk, and eat as many unpasturised dairy products as I can.  I do accidently eat mouldy bread from time to time when I am left with the last slice and it isn't until I am on the last bite that I notice the blue specks.  I steralised everything for my daughter up until she was 6months old - but she was a very very ill baby and I don't know if she would be here now if I hadn't, I didn't bother sterilising anything for my son from birth and he is here and fit and strong.  I eat over ripe fruit and game that has been hanging so long it walks into the kitchen and throws itself into the pan.  My kids drop something on the floor, and the automatically pick it up and blow it and stick it back in their mouths.  We are very rarely sick, coughs and colds maybe, but properly sick, very very rarely, BUT if I open a jar or bottle of my home made preserve, and it is mouldy, I bin it.  I have plenty, it cost so little and I have heard so many horror stories that I don't think it is worth the worry, and I open another.  I think in all of my years of preserving I have only opened a couple of jars that have been iffy and binned.  Tis a funny old world, would be bloody boring if we were all the same.

Bl**dy top woman.

Four children and the good lady all healthy and thriving without a visit to the quack in yonks, except for a slight local difficulty with a  parachute; me neither.

"If it stay's down, it's good food"  A Friend 1964

[SamLouise]

I scrape the mould and eat the rest.  No way I am wasting precious jam for that!  I'm 40 and never been ill from it yet.  At school, our cookery teacher actually told us it was fine to scrap and eat and I've done it ever since  ;D  It's probably the only thing I do it with though - nothing else lasts long enough in our house, LOL

[gunnerbee]

 the mould on my bestest ever homemade marmalade is always lurking on the top!!! but underneath tastes like heaven!!! anyone want some??? lol

[jennym]

Have to agree with the NO MOULD camp here. The mould you see is only the fruiting bodies of the fungus - the jam will be full of it.

[Jeannine]

I often wonder if folks have actually read the research done on this subject,or are they forming an opinion without doing so which I find odd, as in ,most evrrything we educate ourselves.I find this a little scary as so many folks sell their jam .

[carolinej]

As I boil my jam in the jars for 10 mins to seal, is there any way I wil get mould? I dont use waxed paper rings, as I thought it would be OK.

cj :)

[Jeannine]

Caroline, if you are boiling your jars of jam in proper jars with self sealing new  lids in  a  water bath and the water level is 2 inches above the jars you will  not get mould, the jam is brought back to boiling point in the water and the air is driven out while under water, the jars will seal  and the contents will be sterile. They will last years. XX Jeannine

[carolinej]

Oh good ;D Have just made loads of plum jam as my friend has a plum tree. Free plums ;D

cj :)

[HappyMouffetard]

If there was a newspaper saying that a food company had sent out products to be sold which contained high levels of mycotoxins, the public would be in uproar about it and demand it was removed from the shelves.

Mycotoxins are produced by moulds as they grow in your food. Whilst the very occasional consumption of these would hardly affect anyone, they are carcinogenic (cancer forming) and continued consumption could increase the risk of developing cancer. Of course, so can lots of other things. I don't eat it, but I don't eat meat that is starting to putrefy either.

With regard to beet/cane sugar, both are sucrose. The chemical sucrose doesn't know whether it comes from cane or beet. Of course, if you have the less refined cane  sugars there are going to be a variety of flavour compounds as well but pure granulated sugar is sucrose whether it comes from cane or beet.

[valmarg]

With regard to the difference between cane and beet sugar, I believe that some years ago the WI did a test to see if there was any difference between the two sugars in jam making.  The result was that there was no difference at all.

Me, I just prefer cane sugar, and don't buy beet sugar.

valmarg