Question: Hello Julie I heard that cheese is made of bacteria. Is this true? And is cheese more fattning than lets say, chocolate? Thank you and I hope to hear from you soon Sam

Julie Bland answered on 12 Mar 2013:

Hi,
Yes to make cheese, you had a certain type of bacteria the lactic bacteria to the milk, those bacteria will attack the lactose (which is the sugar in milk) and transform it in lactic acid. This acid will make the milk pH decrease and so the acidity increase. This will help the enzyme we had after coagulate the milk. So cheese is made mainly of milk (~97%), bacteria (~0.1%), enzyme (~0.9%) and salt (~2%).

In term of calorie it all depend on the cheese! Soft cheese have got a lot of moisture (60-80%) so you mainly eat water but cheddar as only between 36-40% moisture so the rest is compose of around 25% protein and 30% fat but no sugar.
So it is quit fatty but it has been shown that the fat of cheese especially mature cheese is better than other fat such as fat in crisp because the fat is broken in small pieces when cheese ages making the fat easier to digest. Plus being high in protein, it make you fill full longer. There is also plenty of vitamins and minerals such as calcium which are great for you. Chocolote is the same, dark chocolate is different from milk chocolate. If you take milk chocolate from a famous brand (C*****y) the calorie for the same portion is higher ( 100g of cheddar cheese is 370 calories and 100g of chocolate is 530 calories). So chocolate is more fattening but I guess you often eat smaller portion of chocolate you would of cheese. I believe you can eat both as long as it is small portion and you do some exercise!