The reason France has so many cheeses is because a popular method of execution was done by feeding the victim many different kinds of cheeses. The victims were used to test taste-test all the cheeses that were being produced in those older times. Many kinds of molds could cause death to people and many taste-testers died from toxic mold before their thousandth cheese slice. Cheeses also had many things added to them to test out whether it would improve the taste or not. Mercury was added to cheese because it was thought to provide a long life, something which was proven false after many died from ingesting mercury in cheese. Anything that one could think of was tried and given to the victims to eat.
Some cheeses involved more gruesome acts such as those containing maggots. Napoleon found it too gruesome that he outlawed maggots in cheese while he was in power. Napoleon's rise to power came from finding a cheese capable of sharpening the mind. This cheese recipe was lost until an Austrian man rediscovered this recipe but then it became lost again.
Today, the only remnant of this tradition exists only in the US and small parts scattered throughout Europe. The American Cheese, Kraft Singles, is extremely ingenious in how it stepped up the "death by a thousand cuts of cheese" to "death by five-hundred cuts of cheese." Nobody has been recorded to have lived after eating five-hundred slices of Kraft Singles in one sitting.
Death by a thousands cuts of cheese: 2025-03-06 12:20:40
