Food scientist Tim had a chilling message 'there’s something disturbing'13:32, 26 May 2026Over the bank holiday weekend millions of burgers will have been eaten a slice of ‘burger cheese’ on top. They’re available in every supermarket and are the go to topping for most people.‌However a food scientist today gave a horrifying update on the cheese - and explained how one he put in a cupboard 5 years ago still looks the same. Professor Tim Spector a British epidemiologist, medical doctor, and Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London took to Instagram today to highlight what many people ate over the weekend.‌In a new video, brandishing the slice, still wrapped in plastic, he said: “This craft cheese slice is over 5 years old. If I had any normal cheese, I left it 5 years. It wouldn’t look like this. It would be full of microbes. It would have degraded completely. And yet, this one has remained pretty much intact. And when you take it out of the packet, it’s still bright and shiny.‌“It’s creased a little bit, but it doesn’t look like normal cheese because it isn’t real cheese. It’s fake cheese. It’s analogue cheese. And This is what the ultraprocessed food companies are regularly doing. They’re producing food that looks like real food but actually isn’t. Now, real cheese is made from milk and fermenting microbes. And that combination is both delicious and good for your gut health. This is fake cheese. You should avoid it and only eat the real stuff.”Prof Spector asked the question that if microbes, moulds and bacteria don’t seem interested in eating it - why should humans. He added: “There’s something disturbing about a slice of “cheese” that looks almost identical after 5 years in a cupboard.Content cannot be displayed without consent‌“Inspired by videos of fast food burgers and buns refusing to decompose, I decided to run my own little experiment. Much to my wife’s despair, this Kraft Singles slice has been sitting in our kitchen for half a decade.“Looking at it today raises an important question: if microbes, moulds and bacteria don’t seem interested in eating it… should we be?”He said normal cheese is made through fermentation, where microbes transform milk over time into ‘ nutritionally and chemically very different’. He added: “In many aged cheeses, bacteria and fungi continue breaking down proteins and fats for months or even years, creating flavour, texture and thousands of bioactive compounds.Article continues belowREAD MORE: 'One vegetable' zaps cholesterol and 'also lowers' blood sugarREAD MORE: Oncology expert says eat this breakfast food every day to stop killer bowel cancer“That’s what food normally does. It changes, it degrades, life interacts with it. Ultra-processed cheese slices are something else entirely. They’re engineered to be hyper-stable: emulsifiers, refined oils, starches, flavourings and preservatives all designed to create a uniform product with a very long shelf life. And while technically edible, they’re very far removed from what humans have traditionally called cheese.“Your gut microbes evolved alongside real food. Fermented foods, fibres, complex plant compounds, slowly transformed ingredients. Not fluorescent orange squares that survive half a decade untouched in a cupboard.”Kraft has been asked for a comment.