OT: Cheese

[GeneChing]

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssssssssssssssssss ss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Massive study reveals that eating cheese might be the key to helping you live longer



November 12th 2018
LIFESTYLE
by: Henry Smith

Regardless of the various toppings and sauces you can get with your incredible pie, you truly haven't lived until you've had a pizza adorned with five different toppings. Four's fine, I suppose, but five's fantastic. Parmesan, cheddar, mozzarella and gorgonzola, but instead of a tomato sauce, the base was adorned with brie.

It was heaven.

But apart from trying to make you jealous, why on earth would I bring that up? Oh, because if this study's anything to go by, I might have just bought myself a whole lot of credit moving forward when it comes to overall longevity. This amazing study says that eating cheese is the key to living a longer life, and who am I to argue with science?


Credit: Getty

For more, let's look a bit closer at this study published in the medical journal The Lancet, in which researchers from McMaster University in Canada looked at a whopping 130,000 people from 21 different countries, all of whom were between 35 and 70 years old. What did they look for in these people? Well, their dietary habits were noted, and then separated into two camps - reduced-fat dairy and full-fat dairy.

So here's the thing: eating more than two servings a day of that processed cow milk was conducive to seeing some major decreases in not only your risk of a stroke, but for risk of cardiovascular disease as well. They also found that while cheese did have an impact on those results, you can also see some pretty good benefits by consuming yoghurt or milk.

For test subjects who ate less than 0.5 servings of dairy a day, their mortality rate rose to 44.4 percent overall, with five percent of that being down to cardiovascular disease alone.


Credit: Getty

Of course, we don't readily associate eating a lot of cheese with lowering our chance of death, but Ian Givens, a professor of food chain nutrition at Reading University in the UK, says that this study is vital to changing the public perception of dairy, hopefully helping to change the way dietary guidelines look at dairy intake.

“It also adds weight to the evidence that saturated fats from dairy [probably apart from butter] are not associated with increased cardiovascular disease risk, unlike some other sources," explained Givens.

Mahshid Dehghan, who is an investigator at the Nutrition Epidemiology program at the Population Health Research Institute of McMaster University as well as the lead author on this study, and she argued that we shouldn't rule out dairy products just because they happen they happen to produce a lot of fatty acids.

"Dairy products contain a range of potentially beneficial compounds including specific amino acids, medium-chain and odd-chain saturated fats, milk fat globule phospholipids, unsaturated and branched-chain fats, natural trans fats, vitamin K1/K2, and calcium, and can further be fermented or contain probiotics, many of which may also affect health outcomes."


Credit: Getty

Of course, the study needs more research to figure out exactly why dairy leads to so many health benefits, but we can all rest easy tonight knowing that extra cheese pizza is actually really good for your health.

Some might even call it medicine.

[GeneChing]

WTH? Some researchers gotta lotta time on their hands...

Scientists Played Music to Cheese as It Aged. Hip-Hop Produced the Funkiest Flavor
Researchers played nonstop loops of Led Zeppelin, A Tribe Called Quest and Mozart to cheese wheels to find out how soundwaves impacted flavor


(Bern University of the Arts HKB)

By Jason Daley
SMITHSONIAN.COM
MARCH 18, 2019 1:02PM

The creation of good cheese involves a complex dance between milk and bacteria. In a quite literal sense, playing the right tune while this dance unfolds changes the final product’s taste, a new study shows. Denis Balibouse and Cecile Mantovani at Reuters report that hip-hop, for example, gave the cheese an especially funky flavor, while cheese that rocked out to Led Zeppelin or relaxed with Mozart had milder zests.

Last September, Swiss cheesemaker Beat Wampfler and a team of researchers from the Bern University of Arts placed nine 22-pound wheels of Emmental cheese in individual wooden crates in Wampfler’s cheese cellar. Then, for the next six months each cheese was exposed to an endless, 24-hour loop of one song using a mini-transducer, which directed the soundwaves directly into the cheese wheels.

The “classical” cheese mellowed to the sounds of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The “rock” cheese listened to Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” An ambient cheese listened to Yello’s “Monolith,” the hip-hop cheese was exposed to A Tribe Called Quest’s “Jazz (We’ve Got)” and the techno fromage raved to Vril’s “UV.” A control cheese aged in silence, while three other wheels were exposed to simple high, medium and low frequency tones.

According to a press release, the cheese was then examined by food technologists from the ZHAW Food Perception Research Group, which concluded that the cheese exposed to music had a milder flavor compared to the non-musical cheese. They also found that the hip-hop cheese had a stronger aroma and stronger flavor than other samples.

The cheeses were then sampled by a jury of culinary experts during two rounds of a blind taste test. Their results were similar to the research group’s conclusions and the hip-hop cheese came out on top.

“The bacteria did a good job,” Wampfler tells SwissInfo. The experts said A Tribe Called Quest’s cheese was “remarkably fruity, both in smell and taste, and significantly different from the other samples.”

The tasting, however, was subjective and not everyone thought hip-hop was the cheesiest. “My favorite cheese was that of Mozart, I like Mozart but it’s not necessarily what I listen to... maybe a sweet little classical music it does good to the cheese,” chef and jury member Benjamin Luzuy tells Agence-France Presse.

So, are the differences all in the taster’s heads? It’s hard to say at this point, but the fromage will now go through a biomedical survey to see if there are actual differences in the structure of the cheeses.

When the experimented started, Wampfler—who is a veterinarian by day and cheesemaker in his free time—told the AFP last year that in his experiences all sorts of things can affect the flavor and texture of a cheese.

“Bacteria is responsible for the formation of the taste of cheese, with the enzymes that influence its maturity,” he says. “I am convinced that humidity, temperature or nutrients are not the only things that influence taste. Sounds, ultrasounds or music can also have physical effects.”

Michael Harenberg, director of the music program at Bern University of the Arts says he was skeptical of the whole project when Wampfler first approached him. “Then we discovered there is a field called sonochemistry that looks at the influences of sound waves, the effect of sound on solid bodies.”

It turns out that Wampfler was rooting for the hip-hop cheese to win all along. Now, reports Reuters, he and his collaborators want to expose cheese to five to ten different types of hip-hop to see if it has similar effects.

Wampfler also tells the AFP that he can see marketing cheeses based on the music they matured too. Already, he says people have called requesting cheese that has listened to the blues, Balkan music and ACDC.



About Jason Daley
Jason Daley is a Madison, Wisconsin-based writer specializing in natural history, science, travel, and the environment. His work has appeared in Discover, Popular Science, Outside, Men’s Journal, and other magazines.

[GeneChing]

OCTOBER 2, 2019 / 2:14 PM / A DAY AGO
U.S. hits Scotch whisky, Italian cheese, French wine with 25% tariffs
David Shepardson, David Lawder
5 MIN READ

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration slapped 25% tariffs on French wine, Italian cheese and single-malt Scotch whisky — but spared Italian wine, pasta and olive oil — in retaliation for European Union subsidies on large aircraft.



The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office released a list of hundreds of European products that will get new tariffs, including cookies, salami, butter and yogurt - but in many cases applied to only some EU countries, including German camera parts and blankets produced in the United Kingdom.

The list includes UK-made sweaters, pullovers, cashmere items and wool clothing, as well as olives from France and Spain, EU-produced pork sausage and other pork products other than ham, and German coffee. The new tariffs are to take effect as early as Oct. 18.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office said it would “continually re-evaluate these tariffs based on our discussions with the EU” and expects to enter talks in a bid to resolve the dispute.

Still some Italian foods — Parmesan Reggiano, Romano and provolone cheese — were hit with tariffs as were Italian fruits, clams and yogurt. Also getting new tariffs are German and British camera parts, industrial microwave ovens, printed books, sweet biscuits and waffles.

The main target of the U.S. tariffs is Airbus aircraft made in the EU, which face 10% levy that could hurt U.S. airlines such as Delta (DAL.N) that have billions of dollars of Airbus orders waiting to be filled. EU products winning reprieves include chocolate, Greek, French and Portuguese olive oil, helicopters, frozen fish, lobster, sparkling wine, stemware and tiles.

Joseph Profaci, executive director of the North American Olive Oil Association, said a substantial portion of the imports initially threatened with tariffs were not on the list.

“We’re still digesting what it will mean for the industry, but the total universe of oil affected has been greatly reduced,” he said.


FILE PHOTO: A glass of French red wine is displayed at the Chateau du Pavillon in Sainte-Croix-Du-Mont, France, July 29, 2019. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo

Specialty food importers in August had urged the Trump administration to skip the tariffs, saying “there are few to no domestic products” that could replace the imported items.

The Specialty Food Association said the tariffs would affect 14,000 U.S. specialty food retailers and over 20,000 other food retailers.

Ralph Hoffman, executive vice president of New Jersey-based Schuman Cheese, one of the largest importers of hard Italian cheeses, said the tariffs could slash his firm’s imports by 30% in the middle of the critical holiday season.

“It looks pretty bad. They hit cheese hard,” said Hoffman, who is also a vice president with the Cheese Importers Association of America.

Hoffman said Schuman and other companies had bought extra amounts of cheeses with a longer shelf life, but there was a limit to how much hedging they had been able to do. He said the company brings in over 1,100 containers of cheese each year, serving big box stores such as Costco and BJ’s Wholesale Club.

“This will put a massive dent in that,” he said.

Phil Marfuggi, president and CEO of Ambriola Co Inc, a unit of Auricchio SpA, one of Italy’s largest cheese producers, said 25% was lower than the 100% tariff initially threatened, but it came on top of 10-15% tariffs already paid on specialty cheeses.

Marfuggi, who also serves as president of the Cheese Importers Association of America, said his firm faced extra costs of up to $70,000 each for a dozen containers due to arrive in U.S. ports after Oct. 18, if USTR did not grant a shipping grace period.

Robert Tobiassen, president of the National Association of Beverage Importers, said the new tariffs on whisky, liqueurs and cordials, and wine from certain EU countries, would hit many of the United States’ 12,000 importers hard.

“These tariffs will devastate, perhaps destroy, many small and medium sized family businesses importing these products into the United States,” he said.

Many of the tariffs, especially those on alcohol, were not popular on social media.

Jacob Levy, a professor of political theory at McGill University, wrote on Twitter the tariffs were “an interesting strategy for lowering the trillion-dollar deficit: increase everyone’s need to drink to get through each day’s news, then tax the heck out of the good alcohol.”

Reporting by David Shepardson and David Lawder; Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Leslie Adler, Lisa Shumaker and Sandra Maler

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