Buying food items for the house and then consuming them before they get spoiled is a challenge. While this might sound effortless, keeping up to date with the expiration dates of all the variety of perishable and semi-perishable food requires regular and careful observation. Eating spoiled food may lead to food poisoning and cause worse health conditions such as abdominal cramps, headaches, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, mild fever, weakness, loss of appetite, etc. So, it is imperative to know the signs that tell if food have spoiled. Ways to identify spoiled and rotten food items Here are 10 ways one can identify if their food has gone bad. Rancid odor One of the most effective ways to determine whether a food item is rotten or not is by the smell it spreads. Normally, each food has its own distinctive fragrance. But once the date expires, a bad, pungent odor is released which is quite prominent.  This effective sniff test can help people to identify rotten food. Some food may require taking a whiff from a close distance while other foods which have gone well past their expiry dates will disseminate an odor that is guaranteed to alert the people around. Read 10 Delicious Bangladeshi Dishes With No Onion and No Garlic Textural changes Most foods change texturally when they go bad. Their consistencies can change into mushy, squishy, shrunken, wrinkly, concave, or soft. Such variations can be discerned by touching them with bare hands.  A good example of this can be fruits and vegetables as most of them soften up with time, forming a squished up wrinkly texture. So a good rule of the book to remember is that fruits and vegetables are supposed to feel firm in order to hold their shape. If it is falling apart, then there is something wrong with it. Read Togur: The Molasses Made from Watermelon Juice in Bangladesh Visible molds Molds are greenish or blackish spores that appear on perishable food items once they have started rotting. One of the best examples of the rapid growth of molds is observed on stale bread. Bread usually comes with an expiration date of 3-4 days after its production.