There's memes about people adding small bits of paper towel to food, to see how much paper towel you can add to, say, pasta sauce, before people notice. And as people observe, you can actually get away with a decent amount without anyone realizing. Eventually, people can tell, but you didn't suddenly become a paper toweller *then.* You became a paper toweller the first time you put paper towel in the pasta sauce, and then there was an entire window of time where your food was dubious regardless of whether it tripped any detection thresholds.