system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5:Why is some food "aged" and still edible while others are rotten and tossed out?

Basically the title, why do we age some foods (some cheeses, wine, some meats) and it's still edible or even delicious, but other foods are thrown out when they hit two days old?
gpt
Rotten food is an uncontrolled explosion of microorganism activity, which is almost always going to produce toxins or at least make the food entirely unpleasant.

Aging food is a more controlled process. Conditions such as temperature, humidity, salinity, etc are tuned to allow some bacteria, yeasts, etc to grow and to inhibit others. Somethings are fermented, because we want yeast to turn sugar into alcohol, or other things are aged to become super dry so nothing can grow on it.