Eating cheese derived from cows and goats have long been one of humanity's strange habits that have no end in sight. So, how about cheese from human bacteria? Yes, this is actually happening, but be rest assured, this cheese is not meant for eating, well, not to our knowledge, at least.
Making your own human-based cheese is a synthetic biology exhibition called Selfmade. It is classified as part art and part science and is the work of Christina Agapakis and Prof. Sissel Tolaas, who sampled microbes from human toes, mouth, navels, and even tears to create a set of 11 unique cheeses.
"We are presenting a set of cheeses made using bacteria from the human body," Agapakis told Dezeen. "Everybody has a unique and diverse set of bacteria living on their skin that can be amplified using techniques from microbiology and grown directly in milk to form and flavour each cheese," Agapakis said in an interview.
Agapakis added that each cheese smells and tastes like the body odor of the microbe donor, which is quite disturbing but also a little interesting in the same breath. We, however, wonder if any form of bacteria is able to spread during the process of making these cheese and after.
"It's no surprise that sometimes cheese odours and body odours are similar," she explained. "But when we started working together we were surprised by how not only do cheese and smelly body parts like feet share similar odour molecules but also have similar microbial populations."
The Selfmade exhibition is aimed at showing how living organisms that live inside or bodies are also present in foods.
"Nobody will eat these cheeses," assures Agapakis, "but we hope that the cheese can inspire new conversations about our relationship to the body and to our bacteria."
It's great to know that no one will consume these human-based cheese, as it could cause for a whole new type of deadly diseases. However, to know that cheese can be made from human cells is itself quite extraordinary.
