Would You Eat Human Cheese Made With Human Breast Milk?

There is such thing as human cheese. How is it human? Well, er, it’s made from the breast milk of women. Human women. That’s not gross, right? It’s breast milk, it’s natural. Uh no, still gross. Would you eat it, though?

I don’t think I would. Breast milk is for babies, once you clock enough time on this planet, you stop that shit. You erase it from your memory and overwrite it with thoughts of new mammaries. You don’t turn it into cheese! Cheese is supposed to be delicious, it’s not an appetiser for cannibalism. After this, will blood be the new wine?

But then, you think, maybe I will try it. Cause how natural is it to hijack milk from a cow and turn that into cheese. Human breast milk is as natural as it gets, after all, that’s what most of us grew up with. It’s the lifeline of humanity, it’s the root of our being. And, well, that’s sorta the reason it was made.

Miriam Simun, a NYU student, started her cheese project to challenge the idea of health, ethics, natural, biotechnology and basically every socially conditioned idea in our head. She asks:

If we reject all technologically modified food in favour of what is ‘natural,’ how far back to do we go? If we are determined to continue to enjoy our cheese, perhaps it is most natural, ethical and healthy to eat human cheese?

Currently, there are three flavours: Sweet Airy Equity, which is mild and hard and made from a young mother of Chinese descent. Wisconsin Bang, deliciously creamy cheese made with the milk of a sweet lawyer’s assistant who hails from Wisconsin. And City Funk, a stinky cheese from a reserved lady from Manhattan.

It all sounds so wonderful but, no, I can’t bring myself to do it. It’s too much. Organic, grass-fed, free-range, whatever, that’s my natural. Human breast milk, not so much. [Miriam Simun via Metafilter via Serious Eats]