Fair warning here folks:

This article is about a cheese made by allowing a cheese fly to lay eggs in the cheese wheel. Then the larvae are allowed to eat and "process" the cheese. And then that pre-digested cheese is fed to humans.

While it's not the only food processed by animal digestive systems... The main ones I know about are coffee (civets and elephants) and neanderthals eating partially digested plants from their kills' stomachs. There are also a few similar cheeses out there. So. Um. Dip out if you don't want to read that!

I took the proffered piece of casu marzu and, like a skydiver forcing himself to step out of a plane, popped it in my mouth before I could think any more about it. The flavor was strong and goaty, but not as searingly intense as, say, some Spanish cheeses that make you feel as though you’ve climbed inside a goat. It had a bold barnyard tang that simultaneously dried out my tongue and set my salivary glands into overdrive. There was no identifiable sensation of eating insects. Still, I chewed extra thoroughly, lest any guests make it down the pipe unmasticated. Theoretically, a maggot could survive the gastrointestinal tract and wreak havoc, though my gastroenterologist had given me his amused blessing before I departed.

Some Sardinians will spin you a story that it’s an aphrodisiac, others that it contributes to the so-called blue zones diet credited with the preponderance of long-lived people on the island. But the truth is that many of them just really love it.

It’s a fragile time for casu marzu. Increasingly hot summers because of climate change have affected the life cycle of cheese flies, making their work even less predictable than usual. Last year, out of about 60 wheels, only four or five of the Nieddu family’s ended up as casu marzu. (If the maggots inside a cheese are dead, it is considered inedible.)

The author makes what I think is a good point that all cheese is processed by other organisms, it's just that maggots are a bit larger than the other ones.

A decade ago, an entomologist colleague began a study that aimed to produce casu marzu under safe laboratory conditions, but nothing seemed to have come of it. The men speculated that there was little funding for casu marzu research, the problem being that there is no problem: Casu marzu makers are making casu marzu, casu marzu lovers are finding casu marzu, and so peace reigns.

Despite it being illegal, no one seems to get in trouble for it. But nor will the EU legalize it.

So, Tildenianites would you try it?