I popped some vitamins on an empty stomach before leaving the house this morning, and I usually have adverse reactions to vitamins taken without food, so I opened a new box of protein bars and unsealed a bar on my drive in to work. It was an “all natural” brand made of “all natural” ingredients like oats and dried fruit, no candy coating. Pushing a bit of the brown cow-poo looking stuff out the top of the package, I took a bite. My mouth was instantly filled with the foul sensation of having put asphalt and black tar on my tongue. I couldn’t bite into the piece, but as I was driving, I couldn’t spit it out, either. I looked at the label. What the hell flavor was this, “Satan’s Ass, Now with Real Dingleberries!”?! It was chocolate raspberry. I sniffed the bar. It seemed fine. I bit into the piece in my mouth carefully. Maybe this bar just tastes like this? As I chewed, I realized that as much as I don’t like the raspberry seeds, it wasn’t THAT bad. I took another bite. It seemed okay. A third bite, and again the nasty tar and black oil smell/taste filled my mouth. At a red light, I looked at the one side of the bar I hadn’t yet examined, the surface in the wrapper that faced away from me. It was covered with white furriness.

Great. Mold. I’m eating mold.

I chugged half a bottle of water that I’d thankfully refilled this morning and put in my workout bag, in the passenger seat. After coming to work, I asked my new bailiff, who’s a mom (and therefore should have above-common-sense knowledge magically infused into her brain), “What would happen to someone for eating moldy bread and stuff like that?”
She said, “Not much. They make penicillin out of bread mold, so it’s not going to hurt you.”
I said, “Oh, so all it’s gonna do is kill the bad bacteria in my body.” I can live with that.

So it’s been 2 hours now and I haven’t had any problems. We’ll see how the rest of the day goes.