WEEKLY GROSS-OUT: Casu marzu

I am adding a new regular feature: the Weekly Gross-out. On Mondays, I will find something gross for you to feast your eyes on. This week, it's a cheese from the Italian island of Sardinia. The cheese is known as casu marzu, and it's created by leaving whole Pecorino cheeses outside with part of the rind removed to allow the eggs of the cheese fly (Piophila casei) to be laid in the cheese. A female Piophila casei can lay more than five hundred eggs at one time. These larvae are deliberately introduced to the cheese, promoting an advanced level of fermentation and breaking down of the cheese's fats. The texture of the cheese becomes very soft, with some liquid seeping out. By the time it is ready for consumption, a typical casu marzu will contain thousands of these maggots.

This cheese goes beyond typical fermentation to a stage most would consider decomposition, brought about by the digestive action of the maggots, who appear as translucent white worms, about 8 millimetres long, and when disturbed, the larvae can launch themselves for distances of nearly 15 centimetres. I can't believe that anybody would be so disgusting as to deliberately introduce maggots into cheese and then eat it. This is just filthy and I can't believe anyone would eat anything as foul as cheese with maggots in it. That cheese should be banned before someone gets sick.