Title.
It feels like such a waste.
EDIT: This is the type of cheese I am referring to. It comes wrapped in a piece of plastic then bundled together with x more and all of them get covered in plastic
That’s how it’s made. They melt cheese with emulsifying salts, squirt it into a plastic envelope, and it cools into the shape of the wrapper.
thanks, i’m immediately going to continue never eating the disguising “cheese” slices ever again.
Calling it “cheese” is like saying meatloaf made from meat is “meat”
I think most people would agree that meatloaf made from meat is meat.
Yeah. But they wouldn’t say it’s made it’s “meat”
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But unless you’re making the shittiest meatloaf ever, it’s not.
It’s meat, breadcrumbs, seasoning, egg and whatever else you might put in there.
Yes. There is meat in it. But it is not pure meat.
Talk about splitting hairs
Maybe, but it’s the same logic as “cheese product”.
If you refuse to call American Singles “cheese”, then you should refuse to call meatloaf “meat” for the same reason.
You can call meatloaf “cheese” for all I care, just be consistent in your elitism.
Now that I agree with.
I call the singles “cheese” and meat loaf… personally I call it meat with everything else thrown in.
Yeah but this is about saying kraft singles are not cheese. If someone points at your meatloaf and says “is that meat?” Are you gunna say “no”?
It is meat it’s just meat with shit added. I mean if we include salt and pepper, I’m not even sure the last time I’ve had meat without something added.
I think this idea comes from the old Kraft Singles commercials that were bragging about how KRAFT american cheese is made of MILK!! Good good good. And OTHER brands are made of OIL!!! Bad bad bad. I don’t think any brands are made with anything but cheese, divided milk and emulsifiers, but here we are.
Kraft Singles: Cheddar Cheese (Cultured Milk, Salt, Enzymes), Skim Milk, Milkfat, Milk Protein Concentrate, Whey, Calcium Phosphate, Sodium Phosphate, Contains Less than 2% of Modified Food Starch, Salt, Lactic Acid, Milk, Annatto and Paprika Extract (Color), Natamycin (a Natural Mold Inhibitor), Enzymes, Cheese Culture, Vitamin D3.
I think I can answer this. I remember when the singles came out. Used to be they had American cheese in a block. Sort of. They were sliced and stacked. This was the same American cheese/cheese product used in the singles. Exact same dimensions. The package was not re-sealable though. So I always put my block in a quart zip lock after opening. People were too fucking dumb to do this so their block of American cheese would go stale. And they complained about slices getting stuck together. Why in the world did Kraft decide to make the singles instead of changing the packaging be resealable and have wax paper like every other cheese? I have no idea.
Why in the world did Kraft decide to make the singles instead of changing the packaging be resealable and have wax paper like every other cheese?
Because unfortunately, the average American is that stupid and lazy.
Source: am American and forgot how to spell camplekated words so I ju
It’s kind of convenient for grilling on the go. Have 4 patties, grab 4 slices and throw them in the top of the cooler, rather than the entire cheese pack, or repacking 4 slices.
In Australia, the only cheese you could buy in the supermarket in the 1970s was Kraft in the little blue packets sold in the dry goods section.
To buy “real” cheese you had to go to a dairy, or go to the city centre and buy cheese cut off the block and wrapped in greaseproof paper from a contintental delicatessan.
Polyethylene film was not available.
So when it came out and you could buy real cheese in film from the supermarket, Kraft responded by bringing out "more convenient " Kraft Singles, which you didn’t have to laboriously (?) cut from the block.
That’s not cheese. It’s “cheese product.”
To my understanding, it is actually made of cheese, just cheese that has been melted, pasteurized to extend shelf life and then cooled back into solid cheese again.
Not quite. You’re almost there. The manufacturers add emulsifying chemicals and preservatives.
Its salted curds like cheese, but its not matured. Instead mineral salts are added which absorb the water, the same sort of stuff used in corned beef, bacon and ham.
The colouring is artificial. Its naturally a light grey colour.
If it was cheese it would be legal to label it as such.
It’s the same reason you couldn’t call peanutbutter “peanuts”
Americans owe the peanut butter grandma a huge debt. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Desmond
It is, though.
American cheese is a type of processed cheese in conjunction with sodium citrate, which permits it to be pasteurized without its components separating.
It’s American cheese. The objectively superior cheese for melting on a burger.
only because it’s easy to melt, not because it actually taste better than other cheese options such as cheddar, swiss, or pepper jack.
Kenji Lopez-Alt has a cool video where he uses American cheese as the emulsifier to make some less-melty cheeses participate in a grilled cheese. I have been using it more for its emulsifying agents than anything lately: https://youtu.be/CD8UTr5mMVk?si=n5xOumvtBqromQtB
Oh, but it does actually taste better specifically on a burger.
American “cheese product” can fuck right off. Gouda melts just as well and actually tastes like…you know…cheese.
No, it doesn’t melt nearly as well. It does once you add emulsifying salts to the Gouda.
You stock emulsifying salts?
Yes, do you not? I’m still going through the package I bought 3 years ago.
If you like eating melted plastic
Are you scared of emulsifying agents, or what do you call “plastic”? There is no plastic in American cheese.
if you equate not liking something with being “scared”, that says much ore about you than it does me.
I don’t feel the need to misrepresent things I don’t like. So why do you?
You’re thinking of cheese wizz or spray cheese.
No, I’m not.
It’s “orange” and “oil”
Edit: replied to wrong comment
Not just any cheese product, but “Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product”, because they got in trouble with the FDA a couple of times by calling them “food” hilariously.
American cheese apparently melts so at least it makes some kind of sense.
Kraft singles in Australia are basically made from the same plastic as the packaging and are in no danger of melting or being mistaken for cheese.
Do they not use milk to make Kraft singles in Australia the way they do in America? 🤔
Food tech is kinda my area, so I went and did a little research and it turned into quite a ride. For cultural context, grilled (broiled in the US, I think) cheese and Vegemite is kind of a traditional Aussie snack. Just a slice of white bread with butter and Vegemite, slice of cheese on top, stick it under the grill.
The Kraft singles I remember from my childhood absolutely did not behave like anything resembling real cheese when you did this. It melted on the inside, sure. But the outside just dried out and turned into a kind of plasticky skin, then bubbled and burned. So you were left with this partially blackened and crunchy cling-film like skin disguising a thin layer of vaguely dairy-adjacent molten plastic goop that was guaranteed to stick to and sear the roof of your mouth. Then the skin came off in one piece and slapped you on the chin with the equally hot residue of said plastic goop. For some reason kids loved this.
I’m not sure when OP last ate them, but the Kraft singles I know got axed in like 2017 when Mondelez sold their cheese line to Bega. That makes it incredibly hard to track down the original formula to figure out what in the world they were really made of. They have, however, since been re-released and claim to be at least 45% cheese, which I suspect is a lot more than the ones I remember, probably does melt, and falls pretty squarely into the “processed cheese” definition according to FSANZ. There’s no way in hell I’m buying some to try it though.
There is a How It’s Made episode showing how Kraft singles are made somewhere. It’s still cheese, but they also add more milk to make it meltier, as well as things like preservatives. It’s kind of like a solidified bechamel.
Other brands of similar processed cheese slices tend to made entirely with oils with zero dairy. There is a definite difference in taste and texture comparing Kraft Singles, off-brand singles, and just plain cheddar though.
To get some free cheese with all that plastic you’re buying
Makes them easier to separate.
If you buy cheese sliced by your grocer, they generally won’t put anything between the slices, maybe just some wax paper.
But harder to unwrap.
Let’s be honest here, we aren’t talking about cheese. They are packed per slice because they melt easily. If they weren’t you would end up with an orange blob when it hits room temperature.
They are also packed per slice because they last a lot longer. Plastic cheese or not, cheese slices have a lot of surface area and get funky relatively quickly. Also, every time you reach into a regular bag of deli sliced cheese, you introduce funk-generating organisms.
you realize that cheese is already “funky”? that’s how it’s made in the first place… by letting milk curdle. so, cheese doesn’t really go bad/spoil, as it already has gone bad when it was milk. over long periods of time (months), it can grow mold if stored improperly.
In this context, “funk” = microorganisms that can harm you if consumed. The bacteria used in producing the cheese are safe to consume.
Not all cheeses are funky, and funk that is not characteristic of a certain style of cheese is considered a defect.
I have never encountered this product. Can you give a brand/product name example?
So, what’s the yellow stuff for? To keep the bags from sticking together?
“American cheese”. I searched for an image and conveniently Wikipedia shows one with the clarification that it’s an “American cheese single”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cheese
But, imagine ten or twenty of those individually wrapped slices wrapped together in another bit of plastic.
You can hit an image search for “American cheese singles” and find a lot more examples.
https://ibb.co/SVRjbyj https://ibb.co/SnSB5cV
This was bought from Aldi
Any cheese by Kraft labeled as “singles” would fit the bill. I’ve seen American, Swiss, and Mozzarella done this way. Italics as I cannot confirm other countries would consider it cheese.
check the labels folks, “Cheese food product” is called that because it cannot legally be called cheese.
I think that even in the US it is not considered cheese, but a cheese “product.”
That’s only because agriculture had really great lobbyists at one point. So we have really specific naming regulations.
It’s just ground cheese with citrate.
Mmm pre chewed cheese!
I think it would be disingenuous to call it cheese since it has been processed, just like it is probably inappropriate to call a hot dog ground pork.
Pre chewed? Huh
Ya, maybe that is a little harsh. I admit that I have consumed this product 😬
Yes, it would be illegal to label it as cheese.
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if i buy the store brand american cheese at my supermarket, they’re not individually packed and aren’t really that hard to separate on their own, so lmao idk why Kraft does that.
it is stupid and should at least not be done with plastic. there is a brand of cheese where it’s entirely wrapped in compostable plastic (has the texture of baking paper) and is seperated with the same material. the best option would be to buy cheese that doesn’t stick together easily (like gouda).
It’s for lazy people. I get the ones that aren’t wrapped. They’re cheaper too.
Odds are, because its cheaper than a cardboard box.
It bundles them together. Imagine buying a loose handful of slices, it doesn’t work well.
I’ve bought plenty like that, they’re sliced and bundled together in a plastic container. Unless there is some substance between them that I’m unaware of
I was talking about the outer plastic.
The kind of cheese slices I’m thinking of are sort of a solidified cheeze-wiz substance, I suspect that if there was nothing between them they’d merge back together into the blob they were probably originally extruded from.
Not only that, but iirc they are packaged in liquid form and it solidifies into flat sheets as they are pressed together.
You ever go to a deli?
Those aren’t individually wrapped in slippery plastic.
That kind of “cheese” is super melty, you can get American cheese made just like other cheese, it just isn’t this.
My point is that deli slices of American cheese don’t come individually wrapped. They’re usually wrapped in wax paper and tossed in a bag. It’s only the artificially shelf stable shit that does. Unfortunately people are lazy and don’t want to wait 5 minutes so it’s more popular.
It probably melts and you have one block of cheese once it’s on the shelves of the store. (I’d have to test that hypothesis. But that stuff is really sticky and soft. I bet you can’t slice it and have it stay like that any other way.)
Other than that: convenience. People even buy pre-sliced Gouda.
I’m pretty sure that wrapping is part of the manufacturing process of the “cheese slice”. It matches the contours of the wrapping too perfectly.
I never understood why Americans eat this so called cheese. Why cant they just buy like real cheese that melts? It serves the same purpose but is actually cheese with lots of taste and aroma. I just dont get it.
It makes us feel very French to eat cheddar fond.
American here. That oily “cheese” is gross. We have normal cheese, even normal pre-sliced cheese that doesn’t have the plastic film wrapping it. The brand I normally get for sandwiches has a plastic zip-lock package, and the slices themselves are separated by wax paper. I prefer the pepper jack, but sometimes I go for swiss or provolone.
I’m American and don’t get it either. When I was younger that was the only cheese I knew and I decided I didn’t like cheese because of it. It took a long time to realize that stuff isn’t real cheese and that the real stuff is very good.
I also think it isn’t legal to call some of it “cheese”. I know Kraft singles at the very least uses some deceptive phrasing to say it’s cheese-like or cheese-flavored or something like that instead of calling it “cheese”.
