Can You Still Eat Moldy Corn? Read This Article and You'll Understand

Sometimes corn sits at home for so long that you forget to eat it, and it gets a bit moldy; you want to throw it away but feel it's a waste. So can you still eat moldy corn?

No, you can't. Moldy corn produces a toxin called aflatoxin, which is a toxic carcinogen, and cooking it together with other fresh corn will also contaminate the fresh corn. Eating them together can easily cause poisoning.

During the storage of corn, when the moisture content of the corn reaches 18%, under conditions of 12 to 42°C (optimum temperature 25 to 32°C) and a relative humidity of around 80%, fungi such as Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus parasiticus and Aspergillus nomius invade the corn kernels, causing the corn to become moldy, and the kernels then contain aflatoxin. It is one of the most important representatives of mycotoxins. If you eat moldy corn, aflatoxin will attack your health, causing lesions in the body's vital organs and leading to disease.

In the 1960s to 1970s, Lin County in Henan and Qidong in Jiangsu were areas with a high incidence of cancer in our country. One of the reasons was that local people had long used corn as their staple grain, and because of improper storage, the corn contained aflatoxin, which led to illness. For the health and happiness of you and your family, please do not eat moldy corn.