Reminds me of a book I read more than a decade ago. The Culture Code. By Clotaire Rapaille. He argued that 'the French Code for cheese is ALIVE. The American Code for cheese, on the other hand, is DEAD.'

I don’t have the book handy, but here is a quote from the web:

> I started working with a French company in America, and they were trying to sell French cheese to the Americans. And they didn't understand, because in France the cheese is alive, which means that you can buy it young, mature or old, and that's why you have to read the age of the cheese when you go to buy the cheese. So you smell, you touch, you poke. If you need cheese for today, you want to buy a mature cheese. If you want cheese for next week, you buy a young cheese. And when you buy young cheese for next week, you go home, [but] you never put the cheese in the refrigerator, because you don't put your cat in the refrigerator. It's the same; it's alive. We are very afraid of getting sick with cheese.