Monday, November 29, 2004

behold, the power of cheese



A grilled-cheese sandwich with the face of the Virgin Mary went for $28,000 on eBay. It was made about four years ago, and hasn't grown mold since. Some are calling this a miracle. Some are calling it a trick of the eye, a grand coincidence that is easily explained by science. I call it both.

Brendan I. Koerner, writing in slate.com, explains it this way:

The odds are against a pristine sandwich, but it's hardly impossible. The fact that Duyser's sandwich was a grilled cheese was likely its saving grace, assuming she followed the traditional American recipe. The homespun favorite is usually prepared either by slathering the bread with margarine or by cooking it in a pan or press that's been well-lubed with the fatty butter substitute. Margarine consists primarily of hydrogenated vegetable oil, which is rich in trans fats. The fungi that love bread are typically averse to trans fats—they don't digest them well.

The cheese filling, aside from contributing to the sandwich's fat content, also added calcium to the mix. Calcium is a mild mold retardant, though less so than margarine. The acidic cheese may have also altered the pH level of the sandwich; bread mold grows best when the pH is more or less neutral.

The more religious minded, however, would tell you that it didn't grow mold because it was specifically touched by God himself, who carved the face of the woman who bore his son onto this... grilled... cheese... sandwich.

Well, the Lord works in mysterious ways. Just look at the platypus*.

Here's a totally bizarre idea of mine, however, that says "you're wrong, Religion Guy!" and "you're full of it, too, Science Man!" Hey, says the idea, what if it was a miracle that this holy sandwich bore no mold, but that the margarine and calcium that prevented the mold from growing were the way God (or whomever) did it?

Think of a magician showing you how he did a trick. You lose the "wow!" effect of seeing someone pull a rabbit from a hat, but you leave even more impressed because the magician had to sit down and figure out how he was going to do it first, and make it look seemless. So, in this case, when some mook comes out and says "well, it's not a miracle really because margarine is a fatty acid that blah blah blah...", God doesn't look down and wonder where he left his smiting stick. He instead thinks to Himself "Ah, they've figured it out! Well done there."

It's sort of like taking an Astronomy class and learning that scientists can tell you how the universe expanded and what the noble gases did and all that going back several billion years, but they can't tell you how all those gases got there in the first place.

My only question is: if Mary was a dark skinned, kinda-Semitic looking chick, how come this Velveeta fresco looks so much like Kirsten Dunst?



*-obligatory Peter David reference.


moxie wrote this on 3:25 PM