The world’s most dangerous cheese is served covered in jumping maggots

Cheese is a wonderful food. It’s an essential ingredient in many meals, including some of my personal favorites. But not all cheese is good. In fact, some of them are downright terrifying, even dangerous. Enter casu marzu, the world’s most dangerous cheese. What makes this cheese so dangerous, you ask? Well, this cheese is made with the help of cheese fly larvae, Biophylla cassisand they are still alive and in the cheese when people eat them.

Cassu marzu is made in Sardinia, and this delicacy is considered so dangerous that it is banned in quite a few places, including Italy itself. Even looking at pictures of the cheese is somewhat disgusting, as the worms that help make the cheese are spread within it. They are also very active, able to jump up to 15 cm in the air.

The main reason why Casu Marzu is considered the most dangerous cheese in the world is due to the fact that eating the cheese – even if you somehow get rid of most of the worms in the cheese on your plate – you could end up getting infected with Intestinal myiasis. This basically happens when worms gather and live in your digestive system.

It’s a really serious problem, and when patients develop this condition, it can lead to things like abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhea. Some infected patients can be asymptomatic, meaning they will not know they have larvae living outside their digestive tract because they will not show any signs of infection.

Kind of crazy, right? Despite being considered the most dangerous cheese in the world, casu marzu is also a highly prized delicacy that has been enjoyed for thousands of years in Sardinia. Some even said they didn’t notice worms at all when eating it. I find this hard to believe, considering how much they jumped, but maybe these people were lucky.

Either way, I don’t think I’ll be looking forward to tasting casu marzu anytime soon. In fact, I’d rather forget that this disgusting cheese even exists. But since the brain doesn’t actually work that way I have to live with the knowledge that someone is probably eating cheese filled with live maggots somewhere every day. I think, at least, it’s not driving anything to extinction like frog legs.