Would You Eat Cheese If It Was Made Using Your Own Skin Bacteria?
Nov 26, 2013 20:07
Be warned, as this post might put you of cheese for life. Microbiologist Christina Agapakis and artist Sissel Tolaas have managed to ferment cheese using microbes that grow on human skin.
To understand how this works, you have to know how cheese gets made. Basically, you need milk, Lactobacillus bacteria (to make it go bad) and yeast (to age the resulting clumps and give it a particular taste). As it turns out, our own bodies also produce this bacteria and yeast.
And this dynamic duo has also managed to create cheese from various sources, including the stuff found in the bellybutton of food writer Michael Pollan. The point of the whole project was to question why we're okay with the bacteria in cheese, but not the bacteria on our bodies.
[NPR]
To understand how this works, you have to know how cheese gets made. Basically, you need milk, Lactobacillus bacteria (to make it go bad) and yeast (to age the resulting clumps and give it a particular taste). As it turns out, our own bodies also produce this bacteria and yeast.
And this dynamic duo has also managed to create cheese from various sources, including the stuff found in the bellybutton of food writer Michael Pollan. The point of the whole project was to question why we're okay with the bacteria in cheese, but not the bacteria on our bodies.
[NPR]
