Worlds Oldest Cheese

[taiwan_girl]

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/tarim-basin-mummy-cheese-microbe-kefir?rid=0823FBB1C64AFDF36D6412549D147289&cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=editorial::add=Daily_NL_Thursday_Science_20240926

For millennia, the Taklamakan Desert environment preserved more than the bodies of those buried in China’s Tarim Basin. Scattered around the necks of some laid to rest in Xiaohe, a Bronze Age cemetery, archaeologists found pebble-sized hunks of a yellowish substance: the world’s oldest cheese. A new analysis of the ancient dairy’s DNA hints at how it was made and how its production spread, researchers report today in Cell.

In a previous study, researchers took tiny samples of the 3,500-year-old cheese that bedecked the mummies’ necks. An analysis of proteins in those bits revealed the presence of Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens, a microbe used to produce a type of fermented cheese called kefir.

[Aqua Letifer]

Kefir's awesome. Goes great on granola.

[Renauda]

Kefir is popular in this house. Even I have developed a taste for it. Took a while, mind you.