Every once in a while I come across a press-release so outrageous that I just have to write about it immediately. This is one of those.
A team of researchers from the Bern University of Arts (“Hochschule der Künste Bern” – HKB) in Switzerland tried something novel. They wanted to find out if subjecting wheels of cheese to round-the-clock exposure to certain kinds of music and sound would have any measurable effect on them. Well…
After six months of exposing a total of nine cheese wheels to a constant barrage of sounds via mini-transducers, they reported: “The experiment was a success, and the results are amazing”
You can see the nine candidates in the image above. Here’s what they went through:
- The “Rock” music that was used on the top left cheese wheel was Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven.
- The “Yello” cheese was not named for it’s color but for mellowing to the ambient sounds of Yello’s Monolith.
- “Klassik” – the classical cheese got to enjoy Mozart’s The Magic Flute.
- “Techno” was in a non-stop rave to Vril’s UV
- The “Hip Hop” fromage got to spend it’s time with A Tribe Called Quest’s Jazz (We’ve Got)
- Then there were 3 cheese wheels that were simply exposed to low, medium, and high frequency sinus curves.
- And finally a control cheese that simply got to enjoy 6 months of silence.
In a public tasting event the jury finally concluded “that the cheeses exposed to music had a generally mild flavour compared to the control test sample”. A fascinating result.
But which was the cheesiest?
“Their report also confirms that the cheese exposed to hip hop music displayed a discernibly stronger smell and stronger, fruitier taste than the other test samples.”
Now, how many of you just exclaimed an “I knew it!”?
