Human Cheese
VISIT THE MIRIAMSIMUN.COM FOR THE LATEST ON HUMAN CHEESE
A proposal to develop a create a system for the sourcing, creation, and distribution of human cheese.
This project is an experiment, a process, an exploration, a provocation, and soon to be served for dinner.
Our world is changing. With recent developments in biotechnology we are entering a period in history where we are able to design the living world with a level of depth and precision rarely imagined. We are already able to redesign our food, our weather, our fellow animal species, and even ourselves – and are on the brink of discovery of much more. As humanity gains the power to design life on molecular, genetic, and even nano level, how do we, as a species, develop ethics to guide our design of living systems? How will we begin to redefine what is natural, normal and healthy? How will our relationship to the natural world change?
Simultaneously, a realization is occurring that the ways many of us have been living are unsustainable, unhealthy, and unethical. Industrialized food systems are a prime example: we abuse animals and exploit people in creating food, pollute the earth as we distribute and sell food, and destroy our bodies (our personal living systems) as we consume it. As global urban populations increase, developing nations industrialize, and energy, water and land become ever more scarce resources, how will we redesign our food systems to produce healthier, kinder, more sustainably and efficiently produced food?
To explore these questions and engage others in discourse around biotechnology, food systems, and the human body, I propose to develop a system for sourcing, creating, and distributing human cheese.
Food is one of the best vehicles for discussion; it is also one of our strongest links to the natural world. At the same time, it is a site of contention and revolution: consider the debate over genetically modified food, the organic food movement, the slow food movement, locavores, the urban agriculture movement, and molecular gastronomy. It is also soon to be revolutionized in major ways (such as in-vitro meat and 3-D food printing). How do norms around what we eat develop and change over time?
Cheese is one of the oldest bio-technologies to be developed by humans. It was also, in 1990, the first food product modified by biotechnology (as we now define it) to be approved for sale by the Food and Drug administration (this was genetically modified rennet, an enzyme used in cheese-making).
As we navigate the complex landscape of technologically modified food production, how do we understand what is natural, healthy, ethical? If we reject all technologically modified food in favor of what is ‘natural,’ how far back to do we go? Humans are the only animals to harvest and consume other species’ milk. Cow, goat and sheep milk is neither created for human digestion, nor particularly healthy for human consumption, nor necessarily kind to the animals we harvest and milk. If we are determined to continue to enjoy our cheese, perhaps it is most natural, ethical and healthy to eat human cheese?
By making human cheese as product and delicious food, I will explore living systems on a variety of levels:
1. Cheese (bacterial culture growth and molecular transformation)
2. Human-to-human food production & consumption (consumption-digestion-excretion-consumption-digestion-elimination)
3. Cheese distribution system (sourcing-transport-making-distribution-marketing-consumption-waste)
Why human cheese?
- Healthier (proven health for the immune system; evolved for human digestion)
- Non-exploitative of animals
- Local (humans live in the city)
- Ecological (production of surplus human milk does not take up extra land, water, food, energy resources as does animal milk)
Considerations
Labor ethics regarding milk providers
Taste
Health (assure health of milk)
New cheese making processes (human milk doesn’t curdle)
Sustainable cheese production, packaging and distribution
FDA – where does food legislation support and/or inhibit natural and sustainable food production?
[...] has a fascinating Q&A up with Miriam Simun, a grad student who’s making cheese out of human breast milk. Simun says responses to her project vary: “Everything from [...]
[...] is one of the questions that New York University graduate student Miriam Simun poses with her Human Cheese Project. She has manufactured human cheese from the breast-milk of two women who were overproducing and [...]
I’ve always wondered why people were so fond of drinking milk that came from a cow. If as children we drink the milk from our mothers, why do we switch to the milk that was meant for baby cows instead?
I grew up in a household who did not drink cow’s milk. I do eat cheese, however. I would be very interested in trying human cheese as an alternative. Obviously not so many other people are as willing to make this change. I think that a big factor in introducing the idea is to start with children. Instead of switching to cow’s milk after breast milk, parents should keep the human milk and cheese in the child’s diet.
I wonder what the consistency of this cheese is, however. Is it an easy cheese substitute, or a new food all together. Can you put it in your coffee or melt it in a quesadilla? Again, I would be very willing to try all of this. I hope this movement gains the momentum to move forward in research, processing and persuasion. I will be looking for ways to help once I get back into the states in a few months, and perhaps even while I’m studying abroad (I am studying the food systems in Oaxaca, after all).
Peace, Love and Hope,
Erin
Yes it is somewhat logical because Cow’s Milk literally is breastmilk.
Sick adults and children under five would benefit the most from human breastmilk to help support their immune systems.
only two comments? I’d try it. No inhibitions here. Can I have it with a glass of milk?
Check out a video I made about human cheese!! I did it about 3 years ago… You will laugh!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2IH0p2lYVI
[...] Simun, a student of New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), began her human cheese project last October to explore issues of sustainability, health, ethics, food systems, and biotechnology. [...]
[...] a student of New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), began her human cheese project last October to explore issues of sustainability, health, ethics, food systems, and [...]