In Germany, cheese with mites is gaining popularity again (4 photos + 1 video)
It's early morning, Saturday, which means it's time for strange news. 
The Germans have a very peculiar delicacy - cheese, which is teeming with live insects. And they always eat it along with these insects. It seems to taste better this way. Fans of ant asses will probably appreciate this delicacy.
Moreover, the Germans themselves really consider such cheese a delicacy. The fact is that these same mites of the species Tyrophagus casei secrete waste products and saliva, which in turn are an analogue of fermented milk bacteria necessary for the ripening of cheese.
These mites look peculiar - only 0.5 millimeters in height, eight legs, with lush jaw claws and long hairs on the shell. It cannot be seen with the naked eye, so all gourmets are offered to look through a microscope in order to truly appreciate what they are about to eat. On average, up to 50,000 of these monsters live in one package of such cheese. They even erected a monument to him.
This cheese is called Milbenkäse, and it is produced in only two places in Germany, in the city of Zeiz and in Thuringia. It tastes like Garth cheese and smells like ammonia.
In short, the history of the appearance of this cheese was something like this. 500 years ago, one peasant got an elderberry flower into his perfectly normal lean cheese, and the stem remained sticking out. Mites made their way into the cheese along this stem and multiplied quite a bit. A year later, a peasant came to see how his cheese was doing and discovered a darkened head. The tight-fisted German decided not to throw it away, but ate a piece along with the insects, and he liked the taste so much that they began to intentionally plant ticks on fresh wheels of cheese.
In 1970, this tradition almost disappeared because the GDR authorities banned the production and distribution of mite-infested products in accordance with the Food Law, but local residents decided not to give up and secretly continued to grow such mites, naturally for medicinal purposes.
Years passed, the government changed, and the German government never decided whether it was possible to allow the mass sale of such cheese. But the total ban was lifted, and now any connoisseur can enjoy live mites in cheese.
So the Germans are no strangers to eating insects.
