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Look at that cheese above – seems harmless enough.

Wrong, you fool, because in 2009 the Guinness World Record for ‘world’s most dangerous cheese’ was awarded to casu marzu.

Produced by shepherds on the Italian island of Sardinia, in the middle of the Tyrrhenian Sea, it’s one of those delicacies where knowing less is more.

Basically, cheese skipper flies (Piophila casei, if we’re getting scientific) lay their eggs in cracks that form in cheese, usually fiore sardo, which is the island’s salty pecorino.

Those eggs hatch into maggots, which bore their way through the cheese, digesting proteins and turning the hardy product into something soft and creamy.

Mmmm, delectable.

CNN reports:

Then the cheesemonger cracks open the top — which is almost untouched by maggots — to scoop out a spoonful of the creamy delicacy.

It’s not a moment for the faint-hearted. At this point, the grubs inside begin to writhe frantically.

Some locals spin the cheese through a centrifuge to merge the maggots with the cheese. Others like it au naturel. They open their mouths and eat everything.

These are probably the same people who put pineapple on pizza.

I’m ready to get gross, so let’s see an HD video of casu marzu being cracked open:

There were some maggots towards the end, there.

The process is said to create an intense flavour, “with reminders of the Mediterranean pastures and spicy with an aftertaste that stays for hours”.

Sounds delightful, but as this excellent The Outline article points out, one must be resilient:

When you scoop some of the creamy-mealy cheese out of the rind and make to eat it, the maggots protect themselves by coiling up like organic springs and leaping up to half a foot away from danger, all too often onto your face.

Coiled maggots hurling themselves through the air onto one’s face is a bummer, but that’s not why it’s earned that Guinness World Record:

…food scientists note that letting flies play in dairy risks contaminating it with nasty bacteria like salmonella, and that maggots, as they work through the cheese, produce cadaverine and putrescine, compounds that can be toxic in high doses.

They can also trigger allergic reactions in some and survive stomach acid only to set up shop in people’s intestines, causing intestinal myiasis, an afflication that causes abdominal pain, fever, vomiting, gastric legions, anal itch, and bloody or maggoty diarrheic shits — hence the most dangerous cheese in the world moniker.

Things really escalated with those last few afflictions.

Whilst as many as 10 other regions in Italy produce a variant of maggot-infested cheese, those are regarded as one-offs, whilst casu marzu is intrinsically part of Sardinian food culture.

For more on how it’s made, watch this little snapshot below:

It’s not only the consumption of the cheese that can be dangerous, and the cheese is banned from commercial sale, which means it exists in a legal grey area:

Casu marzu is registered as a traditional product of Sardinia and therefore is locally protected. Still, it has been deemed illegal by the Italian government since 1962 due to laws that prohibit the consumption of food infected by parasites.

Those who sell the cheese can face high fines up to €50,000 (about $60,000) but Sardinians laugh when asked about the prohibition of their beloved cheese.

The legal mindset towards the cheese may be shifting as research into the health benefits of consuming grubs continues, with the European Union leading the charge.

In addition, researchers at Sardinia’s Sassari University carried out the cheese-making procedures in a lab, showing that the process can happen in a controlled way, with islanders hoping that the prohibition may soon come to an end.

Free the cheese, man.

[sources:cnn&outline]