This episode is sponsored by Manukora Honey In May 2013, a shipment of around 1.5 tons of cheese was refused entry into the United States.

The cheese in question was a spherical, orange variety known as mimolette that’s sometimes compared to cantaloupes in looks, and lemons in taste. There’s nothing super startling about that description— nothing to suggest, at least, that this is a suspicious cheese.

But according to the Food and Drug Administration, this shipment of mimolette had a problem: it had mites. If the idea of mites on your cheese makes your skin crawl, we have good and bad news for you. The good news is that most cheeses are not usually filled with so many mites that the FDA decides to take action.

The bad news? Well…this mite was scraped from the rind of a Milbenkase, a cheese from Germany that is also known for its lemon-y flavor. And if you like Milbenkase and mimolette but hate mites… the bad news is, you’ve been eating a lot of mites.

The footage we’re showing you today was sampled and recorded by Chloe Savard, one of our guest masters of microscopes. The last time we featured her videos, we were looking at the hidden structures behind our favorite fruits and vegetables. This time, she brought us cheese.

Like right now, you are looking at the rind of a Milbenkase. There’s a rough sort of graininess to the texture, and you can imagine that it might feel bumpy beneath your fingers. But you might also notice that some of those bumps are moving.

And that feeling under your fingertips is now probably a lot less pleasant to imagine. And that sensation might become worse when you imagine putting some of that cheese into your mouth, knowing that some of those mites will find their way into your body. Now as gross as it is to imagine, and maybe it isn't.

It's just eating animals which lots of people do all the time. I cannot blame the mites, Cheese is delicious! Except that the mites aren't actually here because the cheese tastes good.

It’s really more the reverse: the cheese tastes good to us because the mites are there. Milbenkase is the cheese that it is because of those mites. It begins as a low-fat curd cheese, kind of like cottage cheese, mixed with salt and herbs, and then it is ripened in a wooden box.

Inside of that box are cheese mites, more specifically the species Tyrolichus casei. These mites feed on rye flour that is added to the box, producing digestive juices full of enzymes that help carry out the fermentation needed to develop the cheese. And after anywhere from a month to a year, you can eat the cheese, mites and all.

It’s estimated that there are around 2000 mites in each square centimeter of the rind. Mimolette cheese is also made with the help of these mites, though the species and the processes are a little different. The mites of mimolette eat the crust of the cheese and leave behind tiny holes that help the cheese breathe.

The mite also excretes compounds that impact the ripening of the cheese… which is another not so pleasant image. Despite their differences, Milbenkase and mimolette both owe their flavor to the mites. Scientists have traced the lemony taste of the cheese directly to a compound called neral, which is found in lemon oil… and in cheese mite secretions.

Remove the cheese mites from the process, and you take away that flavor. In the case of mimolette, though, the mites are brushed off the cheese before shipment. And yet enough do remain that sometimes, they can reproduce into a population that is large enough to alarm the FDA.

According to news reports in 2013, the FDA didn’t have an official limit on how many mites could be present on cheese. But ideally, they wanted there to be no more than 1 mite per square centimeter. And the shipment that was making its way into the US had more mites than that, so the FDA stepped in.

For us casual cheese eaters, that intervention might seem reasonable. Mites are pests. We see them again and again in the microcosmos, and they often turn up in places that we do not want them and they cause various conditions that are not comfortable.

And in some people who spend a long time working with these cheeses, mites can cause allergies. But for the people who love the cheese, the crackdown on mimolette was not well-received. This is a cheese that has been around for centuries without much issue.

Plus, let’s face it, cheese often includes some strange ingredients, plucked straight from the invisible world of the microcosmos. Like let’s take a moment with this clip. Just looking at it, where do you think it came from?

This is not a trick question or anything. If you saw the blue, and you immediately thought “blue cheese,” well, you are correct. These samples were taken from the blue veins of the cheese, which are actually dug out by a fungus called Penicillium roqueforti.

These molds used to be found naturally in milk and cheese, and people would even take spores from the best cheese of the last batch and inoculate it on bread to use again. But today, spores are often added during the cheese-making process. As the fungus grows, it breaks down fats in the cheese and produces new flavors The good news is that it is also safe for consumption.

As is cheese made with Geotrichum candidum, a fungus used in the production of a number of soft cheeses, where it grows on the surface of the rind. In fact, it is so widely used in French cheese that one estimate suggested that a French person will eat around 8 kilograms of cheese containing Geotrichum candidum in just one year. Geotrichum candidum lives in a variety of habitats, including soil and grass... but also in raw milk, which is why it’s often found in raw milk cheeses.

And with enzymes that break down protein and fat, the fungus can shape the aroma and taste of the cheese overall. In some, it even leave behind a velvety surface to the cheese. The overall effect of the fungus, though, depends on the strain of Geotrichum candidum.

Some create what’s known as “peau de crapaud,” or “toad skin.” And some are known to impart a greasy or bitter quality. And there are times when perhaps those traits are exactly what you want. In a way, it’s like art made from the microcosmos, a careful adjustment to suit a person’s taste.

And maybe that is what made the response to the FDA’s mimolette blockage so strong. On the one hand, it’s cheese. There are plenty of cheeses available at the store, and to those of us who are perhaps of less discerning taste, it seems like there should be plenty of alternatives should your favorite cheese be held up at the border.

But art is art, even if some of the artists are members of the microcosmos. They weave blue veins or construct velvety rinds or add hints of lemony brightness to the flavor, and through centuries of traditions, we have been the wielders and consumers of an art they know purely as survival. And our own tastes, it seems, have won out.

We haven’t found a lot of official information detailing the FDA’s stance on mimolette today. But we did find a 2015 post on a cheese blog that mentions seeing the cheese return to local stores. Which is good news for everyone… except maybe for the mites that find their way into your stomach.

Thank you for coming on this journey with us as we explore the unseen world that surrounds us. Thanks again to Manukora Honey for sponsoring this episode. As the temperature drops and the festive season approaches, it's time to wrap your loved ones in the warm embrace of extraordinary sweetness.

And what better way to do that than to give them the gift of Manukora's Manuka Honey? This rare, single-origin honey is only produced in New Zealand and the bees that produce it collect nectar exclusively from the native Mānuka flowers that flower for just 2-6 weeks. And this is no normal supermarket honey.

It’s dark, it’s rich, it’s creamy, and most importantly, it is delicious. They sent us a jar of their MGO 850+ Manuka honey, and I can confirm that it is unlike any honey you have ever had It’s great on toast, in tea, or even just by the spoonful. Manukora is a family-owned business with a passion for producing the best quality Mānuka honey in an ethical and sustainable way.

And if you want to know where exactly in New Zealand your jar came from, you can! Each jar has a unique QR code on the lid, and it will tell you right where your batch of honey is from. It even shows you the unique test results showing the potency and purity of your Mānuka, and you will get to learn more about the beekeeper who gathered it.

And here’s the sweetest part, if you head to manukora.com/microcosmos right now, you can get $25 off their Starter Kit which comes with the MGO 850+ Manuka honey, a FREE travel pack of 5 honey sticks, a FREE wooden spoon and also a FREE guidebook! It’s the perfect gift for a loved one this holiday season! That’s M-A-N-U-K-O-R-A dot com slash microcosmos, to get $25 off your Starter Kit!

We love bringing you stories like this one. Stories that for me deepen my understanding of the context that I truly exist in, of a world that was for billions of years, only one of the microcosmos. And that now it is still largely their world.

I'm just living in it. If you want to become one of these people who help support what we do here, you can go to Patreon.com/JourneytoMicro. There's also a bunch of cool stuff that you can get for being a patron.

And if you want to see more from Chloé Savard, she is Tardibabe on Instagram. That's like tardigrade, but instead of grade, it's B-A-B-E. And if you want to see more from us, there's probably a subscribe button somewhere nearby.