American Cheese isn't cheese,
and, in many ways, it is barely American.
So just what are these questionably delicious
bright orange squares?
(bright music)
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In order to understand American cheese,
we first need to appreciate cheese cheese,
which is what brings me
to the Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company
in Northern California.
This is their robot milking facility.
No, these aren't milking robots.
They're milking cows.
Because of the automated system,
cows are able to decide how much they get milked.
For this farm's 330 Holsteins,
typically, that's about three times a day,
producing 10 liters or two and a half gallons of milk
in every session.
Like with other baby mammals,
calves rely on their mother's milk
in order to get all their required proteins,
fat, vitamins, and minerals
in order for them to grow.
Their digestive systems just aren't capable
of dealing with regular solid food.
To slow this milk's progression
through their digestive systems,
calves produce a series of enzymes known as rennet,
which coagulate the fluid into solid curds and liquid whey.
By doing this process outside the calves' body
and then pressing together the curds to drain away the whey,
we get what is commonly known as cheese.
Carefully selected cultures of bacteria
will ferment the cheese,
breaking down the milk proteins
to give a variety of textures and flavors.
With small variations in initial starting products
and processing methods,
we can produce a staggering variety of cheeses.
These are some of the cheeses produced at the farmstead,
while, globally, there are more than 2,000 varieties.
Milk's high nutrient content,
optimized for the needs of growing calves,
means that microorganisms love cheese just as much as we do.
While some natural colonies,
such as the Penicillium roqueforti of blue cheese,
add extra flavor.
Others, like E. coli, can cause food poisoning
and even death.
Because of this,
and before the advent of modern refrigeration,
cheese rarely made its way
outside of the community that produced it,
making it unaffordable and inaccessible
for most of the world's population.
American cheese came along with the goal of changing that.
If you are anything like me,
then chances are you've got a bunch of bananas
in your kitchen somewhere
slowly turning brown
with the promise of turning them into banana bread
rather than just throwing them out.
Chances are you'll buy another bunch next week
and another the week after.
In 1795, this same problem of food spoilage
was getting in the way of Napoleon's conquest of Europe.
Since an army marches on it's stomach,
getting a reliable source of safe food
was of paramount importance.
This prompted Napoleon to offer the 1795 equivalent
of a quarter million US dollars
for anyone who could solve the problem
of long-term food preservation.
Enter French candymaker Nicolas Appert,
who, with zero scientific understanding,
but 14 years of just trying stuff out,
discovered that by taking his rations,
putting them in a glass jar,
sealing it tightly,
and then boiling it for five hours,
they could be preserved for years at a time,
tasting just as good when they went in
as when they came back out again.
The reason that this works
is because high temperatures kill
the decay-causing microbes inside the jar
while the seal stops new ones from getting in.
As long as it holds,
it is impossible for the food to go off
as there are no microbes to cause decay.
This is the basic principle of canned food.
If we try out this heat-based sterilization with cheese,
then it separates out into an unpalatable goop.
Cheese is a homogenous mixture of milk proteins
interspersed with fat globules
and, of course, a lot of calcium.
As cheese melts, these calcium ions force adjacent proteins
to irreversibly cross-link.
As they do, our fat globules get pushed out
and rise to the surface.
Even after the structure cools, these stay separated
and the cheese is ruined.
If Appert had spent more time
helping Napoleon to conquer Switzerland
rather than being in Paris making candy
then he'd have learned that the Swiss had already solved
the conundrum of molten cheese a century before.
How? Fondue.
Fondue is made of a mixture of cheese and wine
which stays homogeneous even when molten.
That's because the acid in the wine
bonds to the cheese's calcium ions,
preventing them from being involved in cross-linking.
Understandably, it tastes a bit like wine,
which is great,
but not necessarily what you want
to be feeding your soldiers.
In 1911, a pair of engineers,
who were appropriately Swiss,
came along and substituted the wine for some sodium citrate.
To show you it working,
I've added some of the sodium citrate
into our original cheese.
Now when we melt it, it stays homogenous,
and when it reforms,
it goes back to its original constitution.
It came too late for Napoleon,
but soldiers have been eating this canned processed cheese
since World War I.
You can even buy it as a civilian in Australia
where, as you can see,
it still contains that sodium citrate.
This one doesn't need to be refrigerated
and has a best before date of 2040,
making it perfect for a country which routinely experiences
"Mad Max" style societal collapse
every time the price of iron ore falls.
(dramatic rock music)
Originally, American cheese
was just this French-proposed, Swiss-perfected form
of meltable long-life cheese,
often made by combining together the cheaper offcuts
of cheddar, Colby, and other cheap cheeses.
It was commercialized
by Canadian-born industrialist James Kraft
while he was living in Chicago,
branding it as American cheese
entirely as a marketing gimmick.
This is a block of true American cheese
which I constructed using the 1916 patent.
I made it with some really nice high-quality cheeses,
meaning that it too is delicious.
As an extra bonus,
the properties which allowed it
to survive heat-based sterilization
also means that it melts beautifully into mac and cheese
or on the top of a burger.
Since 1900, US cheese consumption has grown
from two to 18 kilograms per person per year,
in large part due to the accessibility and affordability
of long-life American cheese.
But with big growth and bigger profits
comes the tendency to take some pretty disastrous shortcuts.
One of the key limitations of this processed American cheese
was that it still required a lot of cheese cheese
in order to produce.
Now, that cheese cheese is typically pretty expensive.
In the early years,
they could get away with effectively free offcuts,
but as demand for the American sort grew,
they needed to get dedicated sources.
As a lover of true, proper cheese,
I think that sounds like a massive waste.
Kraft thought so too,
but from a more economic perspective.
Sourcing all that cheese was getting really expensive.
Now, a much cheaper dairy product is milk
and, in some cases, butter
because these require a lot less processing.
Therefore, Kraft started to substitute the cheese cheese
for these cheaper other dairy products.
By adding in a little bit of flavor compounds,
no one was any the wiser.
In the mid 1990s,
this substitution got taken to the extreme.
Koch Membrane Systems had just invented
polyethersulfone membrane.
This, by the way, is a tea strainer,
but should give you the right idea.
It was filled with tiny holes
which were able to filter milk
into its constituent components,
including a powdery protein-rich substance
known as milk protein concentrate.
Because milk of any quality,
including exceptionally low quality,
can be made into milk protein concentrate,
and this concentrate can last for two years
without needing to be refrigerated,
as you might expect, milk protein concentrate is easy to get
and exceptionally cheap.
As you might have also guessed,
Kraft started to substitute
some of the cheese-derived milk proteins
with some of these concentrated milk proteins.
Cheese naturally has some variance
in the amount of protein which it contains.
As an extra bonus,
by adding in more or less of the concentrate,
differences between batches could be evened out,
giving consumers a more consistent
and thus more desirable product.
But with all of these additions,
substitutions, and processing,
can we still call it cheese?
Fortunately, there is one place with the definite answer.
(bright orchestral music)
This is Title 21, parts 100 to 199,
of the US Code of Federal Regulations,
effectively the food part
of the Food and Drug Administration.
Among other things, it outlines standards of identity
for all the foods recognized by the US government,
letting us know what must be in
and what must not be in certain foods
in order for them to be branded as such.
If you don't obey these standards,
then you can still sell your safe product as food,
but you can't label it as one of these protected categories.
Let's take a look at some of the 52 pages on cheese,
starting with a Gorgonzola.
- (gulps) Ooh, I do like a bit of Gorgonzola.
- To name your cheese Gorgonzola,
it must be characterized by the presence of blue-green mold,
Penicillium roqueforti,
throughout the cheese.
The minimum milk fat content is 50% by weight of solids
and the maximum moisture content is 42%.
Effectively, that stops you selling water as cheese.
We also see that it needs to be matured for 90 days
and get a pretty detailed description
of the production method
as well as the temperatures and times
that must be involved during that production.
We get a list of optional ingredients
which you can include if you want to, but you don't have to.
If you want to add something else, like wasabi,
that is not in the required or optional ingredients list,
then you can't sell your cheese as Gorgonzola.
There are two standards dealing with American cheese
of relevance to us today.
First of all, we have pasteurized processed cheese,
made of almost entirely real cheeses
with a little amount of extra ingredients as required.
This is the original American cheese that we made earlier.
We also have pasteurized processed cheese food,
which allows you to add in many more milk fats and solids
as long as these don't exceed 49% of the final product.
51% still has to be real cheese.
When Kraft started to add in the milk protein concentrate,
which they knew wasn't one of the approved ingredients,
importantly, they kept the name the same
despite this no longer being allowed.
Incredibly, no one noticed until 2002
when, during a routine inspection,
the FDA noticed that this unknown ingredient
was being added into Kraft Singles.
Understandably a bit upset,
they gave Kraft an ultimatum,
either remove this product from the cheese
or you had to stop calling it cheese,
at least the federally regulated terms of cheese.
Kraft went with this second option,
quietly rebranding themselves from food to product,
a legally meaningless term
allowing them to continue adding
this milk protein concentrate.
Other companies which had also been using the ingredient
did the same,
and I've had a lot of fun going around my local supermarket
to see which cheeses are legally cheese
and which other ones are entirely made up.
American cheese isn't cheese,
but I don't think it has to be.
It's got us through two world wars
and brought affordable cheese consumption to the masses.
The same masses who, today, have caused a renaissance
in local specialty cheese production.
And who knows, when the apocalypse finally does arrive,
perhaps it'll be cans of bright orange cheese
which pull us through the Thunderdome.
Until then, this has been James Dingley
from the Atomic Frontier.
Keep looking up.
(bright music)
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