
Is Cheese Rational? (2012) - pepys
http://chethamslibrary.blogspot.com/2012/06/is-cheese-rational.html
======
SwellJoe
So...perhaps the author of this marginalia is questioning whether cheese
thinks (or is alive in some sense), rather than whether making cheese is a
rational pursuit? The next one "Is cheese animal, and do we eat it alive?"
makes me think it's much more likely the former than the latter.

That would be an interesting question, and maybe illuminating of the general
knowledge about microscopic processes back then. Some cheese, of course, has
bacterial cultures involved in the making of, and so some cheese _is_ alive,
by some definition. In the usual case, though, I guess it is adding acid to
milk/cream and letting it coagulate into curds and then pressing it; so the
answer is probably mostly no, if we assume a relatively clean environment for
making and storing the cheese. But, perhaps the writer of the marginalia is
wondering if it is a process like making beer, or other fermentation that _is_
actually using live cultures (I don't know how well the "liveness" of yeast
and other cultures was understood back then; though I suspect they understood
it better than the average modern non-baker/non-brewer, since so many people
made their own bread and beer).

~~~
barrkel
"Some cheese"? All cheeses worth savouring are cultured. All cheddar (probably
the most popular cheese globally) is cultured. The only cheeses that aren't
cultured are things like uncultured mozzarella or queso fresco.

~~~
SwellJoe
"All cheeses worth savouring are cultured."

I'm rather fond of a wide variety of fresh cheeses. Paneer, and other sorts of
"farmers cheese" and cottage cheese are all made with just acid curdling and
aren't cultured. Most mozzarella, and many other soft cheeses, can and are
made without cultures.

I'm not an expert on the subject, by any means, but there's a huge variety of
things we call "cheese" and they're made in a pretty wide variety of ways.
More importantly might be what kinds of cheeses people were aware of and
making back when this note-taker was thinking these thoughts and asking these
questions about cheese. Were cultured cheeses common in his region and time? I
dunno and the article doesn't reveal it. There have been times and places
where "cheese" meant a fresh cheese like paneer or cottage cheese, but
probably other times and places when bacterial cultures were involved in all
or most cheese production. I suspect the further back we go, the more likely
we are to find fresh cheeses being more common than the cultured cheeses since
they were simpler to make, but I dunno. The ability to store a hard cheese
without refrigeration would have been pretty valuable to pre-industrial
society.

~~~
barrkel
I like mozzarella, but I don't savour it. Some dishes call for cottage cheese
as an ingredient, but I don't nibble on cottage cheese at a wine tasting. To
me, these are two very different things.

------
205guy
It seems to me that both the manuscript and its annotations are being entirely
misinterpreted by the other commenters here. It doesn't help that the article
in question is giving so few details or context.

Near as I can tell, the manuscript is creating some sort of allegory whereby a
creator god (in this case that of Christianity) creates humanity, to be
compared with the way that humans create or make cheese.

In that context, the "is cheese rational?" annotation is expressing doubt at
the validity of the comparison, by pointing out that the distinguishing
feature of humans is their ability to think (to reason or be rational).

The second annotation about cheese being animal and eaten seems to further
criticize the comparison by pointing out that human is to cheese not as
creator is to humanity.

At least without some deep theological background into the time and place of
the writings, that would be my interpretation.

------
bane
One of the things that's most impressive about humans is that, despite needing
somewhere between 1200-2000 calories per day to survive, humans have managed
to not only find that number pretty much anywhere on the planet, but find
enough variety to provide for all essential nutrients.

For example, I was idly watching this documentary [1] and there's a point
where the subject of the film ends up living with some natives of micronesia.
Here's the relevant bit
[https://youtu.be/-qSXyz3he3M?t=899](https://youtu.be/-qSXyz3he3M?t=899)

Despite living on a tiny dot of land surrounded by undrinkable liquid and
virtually no major sources of fresh water. These folks have managed to find
that many calories x 150 people _and_ get enough variety to get all of their
major macro and micro nutrients covered. They've been successful enough at
this to have made a successful go at it for thousands of years. And if you
look at the people, they're not at near starvation levels of food.

And we find this everywhere on the planet, humans of the same species, managed
to spread to nearly every corner of the planet thousands upon thousands of
years ago survive and thrive. That's amazing.

There's lots of comments that remark on what you end up eating when you're
starving. But I think the pattern is in many ways the opposite. Humans have
been successful _everywhere_ they could walk, climb or get to on a boat. Most
of human habitation is one of getting enough to eat most of the time, at least
long enough to reproduce and raise the next generation to the point that they
can feed themselves.

Another point is that humans have had various preservation techniques, in
almost every society I know of, dating back into pre-history. The idea that
you can apply a set of techniques that work one place to another makes
complete sense.

Cheese is likely the result of a very deliberate process and patience rather
than a starving person desperately shoving anything that might have digestible
calories into their mouth.

1 -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qSXyz3he3M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qSXyz3he3M)

~~~
Houshalter
Cheese is a way of making milk edible. Before cheese humans couldnt digest
milk. Someone let a bunch of useless milk set out and realized the result was
pretty tasty, hence we have cheese.

------
douche
I have to wonder what was going through the mind of the first person who
stored some milk in a sheep's stomach, waited a few days, and decided, "Hey,
this coagulated mess looks like something I'd like to eat"

~~~
danieltillett
You don’t have to wait a few days for rennet to work. It will coagulate the
milk in minutes.

In the past when everyone lived on the edge of starvation you could not be so
fussy in what you ate. If you really want to see what starvation will make
people eat take a look (from a great distance and upwind) at Hákarl [1].

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hákarl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hákarl)

~~~
kough
I tried this – on a visit to Iceland, my (older) family friend / impromptu
tour guide made me and my traveling companions taste it. The young Icelandic
locals in the rest area laughed their asses off and snapchatted the whole
thing, because "no one eats that anymore, it's for old people obsessed with
traditions." Makes sense, it was truly disgusting. The Hvalspik
([https://guidetoiceland.is/history-culture/the-worlds-most-
di...](https://guidetoiceland.is/history-culture/the-worlds-most-disgusting-
icelandic-food)) really was quite interesting though.

~~~
danieltillett
Some traditions deserve to die. Another one that I will not be sad to see go
the way of the dodo is Surströmming [1]. I love the quote from Wolfgang
Fassbender "the biggest challenge when eating surströmming is to vomit only
after the first bite, as opposed to before”.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surströmming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surströmming)

------
M_Grey
When you know virtually nothing accurate about how the world works, anything
can be a source of wonder and irrationality; that's my takeaway from the
quoted portions of that manuscript.

------
sandworm101
Is eating cheese rational?

I'm reminded of a statement by Jeremy Clarkson about the possibility of
nutritional warning labels on cheese. Without substantial nutritional
value[1], being essentially just calories, the rational decision is to not eat
it. But we do. His point was that if things like soda (Coke) is going to be
labelled or taxed as unhealthy, why not cheese? For some historical or
cultural reason why see cheese as something wholesome or "natural". Is is? It
seems to me more a trick of chemistry, a means of preserving caloric content
from a time when getting enough calories was the only concern.

[1] While cheese does contain some nutrients, you have to eat piles of it to
get anywhere near a recommended daily dose, by which point you've eaten far
more calories than anyone would consider healthy.

For below:

Vitamin D in Cheese: 1oz = 2% of daily value.

100/2 = 50 oz to get your daily minimum of D from cheese.

50oz of cheese = 1.5kg = 5700 calories + bowel obstruction = Not a rational
way of getting your daily Vitamin D.

[https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD-
HealthProfessiona...](https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD-
HealthProfessional/)

~~~
jholman
Cheese contains huge quantities of fat and protein, both of which are
nutrients that I want to eat. What on earth do you mean by "without
substantial nutritional value"? Are you of the impression that calories are
bad? Listen, my doctor says that if I don't get at least a thousand calories a
day, I might _die_.

~~~
lmm
Sure - but apply that same logic to Coke.

~~~
masklinn
By weight, Coke is 10% sugar, 4% sodium, 2% potassium and the rest water (with
trace amounts of fat and proteins). To a close approximation, Coke's calories
are 100% sugars.

~~~
lmm
Still a substantial contribution towards those thousand calories/day that GP
was after.

