What is eating my cheese?

Hi ya! How're you doing today? Fill your mug with some freshly roasted and brewed coffee and nudge one of those delectable virtual treats onto your plate. Try a cheese danish. You do like cheese, right? I love it! Well...this may affect whether you continue to like cheese or not...

The Food and Drug Administration in the US of A proposed recently to limit the quantity of tiny "mites" that could occupy imported cheese, even though living, crawling mites are a feature desired by aficionados. 

"Cheese is absolutely alive!" proclaimed microbiologist Rachel Dutton, who runs the "cheese laboratory" at Harvard University. 

In fact, cheese is home to various molds, bacteria and yeasts, which give it flavour and sellers routinely use blowers to expel excessive critters, but the FDA now wants to limit them to 6 bugs per square inch. 

However, according to a May report on NPR, lovers of some cheeses, especially the French Mimolette, object, asserting both an indifference to the sight of mites creeping around -- and a fear of taste-loss (since the mites burrow into the hunk, aerating it and extending the flavor).

I know...some people's reaction is going to be..Yeecch! Have I been eating bugs every time I nibble on a morsel of cheese? Uh-huh. Yep. That's for sure, eh! But don't think of it as eating bugs...rather as increasing your daily intake of protein - which is good for you.

See ya, eh!

Bob