The Molecular Secrets of Cream Cheese

Roland Piquepaille writes "The June issue of Wired Magazine carries a story about one of the two university labs in the U.S. dedicated to cream cheese research. This one is -- where else? -- in Madison, Wisconsin, where researchers are exploring the molecular mysteries of cream cheese. You may not know, but this cheese is tricky to produce because the acid-secreting bacteria used to coagulate the milk need to be killed at the right time. The researchers are now writing a guidebook about the secrets of cream cheese, a book which will be available to anyone, in a process similar to the open source movement for software. For more information, please read the entertaining article of Wired magazine, 'Schmear Campaign' or this summary to discover little-known facts about cream cheese."

Re:Science gone amuck again

[Anonymous Coward]

Accounting for inflation, organic milk costs the same as it did 20 years ago. Regular (GMO) milk is cheaper. So you can be cheap or you can be organic. Choice is good.

Re:Strangely,

[mnemonic_]

Hyperbole aside, that sentence raises an excellent point. Most likely he was referring to Thomas Jefferson's idea of an "academical village" [virginia.edu]. Therein lies the strangeness. Who would have guessed that nearly 2 centuries later, there are no academical village papers on cream cheese? "Bizarre" is an understatement.

Nondairy cheeses a bigger challenge

[mcostas]

The real need for research remains nondairy cheese. While there are now excellent vegan alternatives for most everything, milk, ice cream, hot dogs, etc., cheese is really tough to get right. Even most soy cheeses contain casein, a milk protein. Tofutti does make an amazing nondairy cream cheese, but solid, meltable nondairy cheese remains very elusive.

Re:Science gone amuck again

[Tx]

Our lifespans are longer than they have ever been in the first world, thanks largely to modern science-based medicine. For most of those "thousands of years" you talk about, people had lifespans of around thirty years. So I think you should show some respect for science, there is no reason to think science can't improve on food, indeed there's every reason to believe it can. And there's definitely no reason to thing that the status quo of the last few millenia is so good that it shouldn't be changed.

Re:Science gone amuck again

[Waffle Iron]

20 years ago everything was organic

Not even close. The use of synthetic pesticides disqualifies an item from being organic. Some of the pesticides that they were spraying on your food 20 years ago are now banned because they were found to be unsafe.

They'll probably end up banning some of the current genetic modifications if and when they find problems with it, but that doesn't mean that 20th century agriculture was especially safe. (And prior to the 20th century, there were major health risks in the food supply from natural causes like bacterial contamination. There has never been a safe food utopia.)

Re:Wonderful

[MustardMan]

Yeah, because, you know, no one ever discovered anything truly revolutionary to the scientific world while working on "mundane" things.

What sets us apart from the apes is our drive to seek knowledge purely for the sake of knowing it. What sets the US apart from many other nations is our willingness to fund science in all its forms, whether or not a given research projects produces something whose value can be measured in dollars and cents.

Re:Wonderful

[NMerriam]

I am so glad that tax dollars extorted from me are being spent on such important projects. Thanks Uncle Sam!

Yeah, WTF? When has learning anything about organic chemistry prove useful?

Re:Wonderful

[3ryon]

What sets us apart from the apes is our drive to seek knowledge purely for the sake of knowing it. What sets the US apart from many other nations is our [Historical] willingness to fund science in all its forms, whether or not a given research projects produces something whose value can be measured in dollars and cents.

Just had to correct that little typo.

Re:Make your own mascarpone!

[Anonymous Coward]

that's not mascarpone, it's ricotta.

Re:Science gone amuck again

[PhoenixK7]

The world has done very well without scientists mucking up our food sources. How many thousands of years have people lived off what the earth grows?

Really you couldn't be more wrong. They may not have called themselves scientists, but farmers have been selecting crop products basesd on traits for millenia. Do you know what we call corn now looked like before domestication? It's thought to have been derived from teosinte [wikipedia.org]. We've been engineering foods for thousdands and thousands of years. You find one kernel on the plant, grow a few, look for the ones with 2 kernels, and so on. Hell, breadfruit which is found throughout polynesia and micronesia used to reproduce sexually. The current plants are now pretty much all derived from parts of a few original plants and they now rarely, if ever, produce any seeds. To imply that genetic engineering is new is pure and utter garbage. We're simply doing it in a more directed manner now with better tools. Will there be unseen health effects? Sure! In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there are recalls on crops down the line. Is what we're doing now any less natural, I don't think so.

Troll?

[ackthpt]

"The work is funded by federal grants," (snip other sources of funding, yes I know it's not ALL tax funded)

I am so glad that tax dollars extorted from me are being spent on such important projects. Thanks Uncle Sam!

I wonder if you meant this in humour and were completely overlooking the Open Source bias of slashdot.

Here's another way to look at it:
The government funds are going into something which will be released to the public.

Rather than: The government funded collegiate research will become proprietary to the University of Wisconsin, which will then lease out the rights to dairy producers the patented processes of precisely producing Cream Cheese.

I think I'm find with government funded public domain knowledge. Doesn't appear you are at all. Care to clarify?

Simiar to Open Source?

[JohnsonWax]

You mean, like peer-review science? Gee, have we really fallen so far that we don't recognize what proper science looks like?

Re:Security Through Obscurity Fails Yet Again

[Forbman]

Worrying about a few hundred thousand dollars of a seemingly trivial research grant, and possibly ignoring the billions of dollars going into the occupation of Iraq monthly? Makes sense to me.