The saying “the moon is made of green cheese” is sarcastic and implies an unfounded belief. The reference to green cheese means young or unripe, reinforcing the idea of credulity. Some astronomers have published satirical reports attempting to prove the Moon is made of cheese.
There are some sayings that are designed to be spoken with the tongue planted firmly in the speaker’s cheek, and the supposed connection between the Moon and green cheese is one of them. When people say the moon is made of cheese, they are almost invariably sarcastic or deliberately obtuse. Since the actual (and cheeseless) composition of the Moon should be well-established knowledge, anyone who honestly believes it was made with green cheese would clearly be seen as ignorant or gullible. This is where most people bring up connection in conversation.
The reference to green cheese comes from an alternate meaning of “green.” The cheese is not green in color, but green in the sense of “unripe” or “young”. A young cheese would not have the time to develop all the flavors and other nuances of a fully matured cheese, even though it would share the same round shape and mottled texture. Some linguists speculate that the reference served to reinforce the idea of credulity or naïveté surrounding belief in the dairy origins of the Moon.
However, that’s not to say that a comparison to green cheese would be entirely illogical. The Moon is round in shape and even without magnification it appears mottled and pockmarked, just like a cheese puck. The saying “the moon is made of green cheese” is meant to imply an unfounded belief that could easily be disproved, although the imagery still functions on a symbolic or metaphorical level.
Some astronomers and researchers have periodically published satirical reports attempting to prove that the Moon is actually made of cheese. Genuine satellite photographs of the lunar surface are often doctored to reveal an “use by date” typically found on packaged cheeses. Other “evidence” of the Moon’s cheesy origins could include the presence of so-called “moon rats” or green-tinted photographs of Swiss cheese-like craters. If nothing else, these satirical lunar cheese reports prove that astronomers and other space experts are woefully underused sources of high-tech humor.
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