When is a rotten food rotten?

Tuesday, 10/04/2018

What: Smashed cheese cubes. I think a car drove over...

How to tell if rotten foods are gone bad?

Take some fresh milk, let it sit at room temperature and after a while, natural bacteria will transform it into a thick and taste sour. This is yogurt as it happens naturally. The process happening is called fermentation.

Now take this fermented milk, separate the milk solids (protein, carbs and fats) from the liquids (whey), let some more bacteria and moulds do their job and you'll get cheese.

So cheese is basically rotten milk. Because when things rot, it's due to bacteria and other microorganisms that start eat the food, and depending on the species, they're actually quite healthy for us (and thus usually taste good), or not so much.

So, in the case of cheese, it will go bad when bad bacterias accompany the good cheese bacteria, which might be hard to tell when you don't know how the cheese is supposed to look, taste and smell like.

Take away? Fermented foods are naturally conserved and thus last longer than unfermented foods. So double check your cheese, milk, sauerkraut and yogurt; they last a lot longer than indicated on the packaging!