We have seen fans go to extremes to express their love for their favourite celebrities. From going under the needle to get their name tattooed, to building a temple and worshipping their idol and sometimes even writing them a ‘bloody’ letter, people have their weird ways of expressing love. But, would you like to consume food that has been made with bacteria harvested from the skin of your favourite personality?
We all know cheese has some weird ingredients like microorganisms, but apparently, they’re now coming from unusual places. Well, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London now features five ‘human cheese’ those are unique in a very bizarre way. What’s special (read weird) about these cheeses are that they have been made with bacteria harvested from the skin of some well-known personalities.
Sounds Gross?
According to a NDTV, a blog published by the Victoria and Albert Museum stated that the bacteria is derived from the armpits, toes, belly button and even nostrils of well-known personalities, in this case musician and cheesemaker Alex James (Blur), who chose to be recreated as Cheshire cheese, chef Heston Blumenthal (comté cheese), British rapper Professor Green (mozzarella), baker and food writer Ruby Tandoh (stilton), and Madness frontman Suggs (cheddar).
Luckily (we would like to say) these celebrity cheeses are not available for consumption (as of now) and were conceptualised to ‘enhancing our appreciation of the microbial world.’
“The cheeses are being sequenced in the lab to find out exactly what species of bacteria they contain and whether they are edible in terms of food safety. Our skin is home to millions of bacteria, fungi and viruses that compose the skin microbiota, similar to those in our gut. The challenge is to identify the good bacteria and to eliminate the bad in order to get a cheese that hosts the right microbes to make it edible and tasty,” reads the blog.
Would you really go this far to taste your idol’s essence in cheese?