Dairy aficionado answers cheese FAQs

I love cheese. I like a lot of foods, but cheese is definitely up there on the list of things that the loss of which would make me very sad. We even have an entire drawer in our fridge dedicated to it: I have string cheese for snacking, sprinkle cheese (or as you adults call it, shredded cheese) for pasta and such, a big hunk of Parmesan for when I feel like being fancy and whipping out the microplane, and even the crappy cheese food slices that aren't technically cheese but are perfect for egg sandwiches.

My own adoration aside, there's now a book all about the science behind one of the best foods ever. USDA research chemist Michael Tunick wrote The Science of Cheese last year, and he wrote a small piece for Wired with a few cheese FAQs he's gotten throughout his career. Here are a few from his list:

• Why is cheese yellow? The plants that cows eat contain carotenoids, which are the pigment compounds that make carrots orange. During the transfer from diet to milk, carotenoids latch onto fat: cheese is yellow because the fat content is high enough. Milk isn't yellow because there isn't enough fat and therefore not enough carotenoids. Fun fact: this only works in cows; goats, sheep, and other dairy animals convert their carotenoids to vitamin A, so their milk and subsequent dairy products are white.
• Can lactose intolerant people eat cheese? Actually, yes. Most lactose is removed from cheese during the manufacturing and aging processes. The mutation leading to lactose digestion arose in Europe between 7,000 and 10,000 years ago, likely as a way to allow people access to vitamin D considering the low sunlight levels, but the majority of the world's population (~65%) is lactose intolerant, especially outside Europe and northern Africa. 

  

  Picture from J.P. Lon on Wikimedia Commons

• Why are some cheeses made in specific places? For some places, there's actually a law preventing certain types of cheeses being made in other areas. I remember watching a special on the Travel Channel about a race in England where they throw a wheel of Double Gloucester down a really steep hill and have participants run down to catch it. It was a pretty big deal, not only because a lot of people get injured each year rolling down a hill that I want to say had a 90% grade on one part, but also because Gloucester cheese is only made in that area. Roquefort, Brie, Emmental, and other cheeses are also only made in their namesake area, and one of the banks in the Emilia-Romagna area uses their parmesan-reggiano cheese as collateral for loans.
• And finally, can you make cheese from breast milk? Apparently this was a very common question that Tunick received, and the answer is no because there's not enough protein in general, let alone casein, which is the protein involved in forming curds.