Here’s When Cheese Stopped Being Real

It’s a pretty safe stance to take that the modern definition of “cheese” has become a wide umbrella. Sure, all the old stalwarts are still covered, but they’re now sharing a definition with the Singles and Whizzes of the world, which does feel a little disrespectful. They might all technically be cheese, but there’s a reason you’re unlikely to see a further-squared slice of Kraft on a charcuterie board. At the same time, heavily processed cheeses’ convenience has edged out classic cheeses from some of their storied perches atop burgers, nachos and the like.

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be some monocle-polishing, stick-up-ass diatribe on processed food. I’d rather have melty American squares at a backyard barbecue than fake-smile through cold, unmelted but honest cheddar. I am curious, though, who broke the seal on what cheese could be, and kicked off its rapid evolution — or devolution, depending on your stance.

What we know as processed cheese reared its easily-melted head thanks to a name that’s still head honcho in the cheese space today: Kraft. Long before billionaires tinkering with football teams and trophy wives, James L. Kraft was a simple cheesemonger, with a simple problem: His cheese kept spoiling before he could sell it, and in an attempt to create a cheese with a longer shelf life, the first “processed cheese” was invented. 

The original Kraft slice was still fairly honorable to its cheese ancestors, however. It was just cheddar cheese, heated at 175 degrees for 15 minutes while continuously stirred in order to pasteurize it. Honestly, it was a bit of genius, one that no one probably expected to kick off a legacy of cheese-flavored chemical solutions.

In fact, Kraft, then and now, probably deserves a little bit of a break when it comes to their cheese quality. After all, shelf stability was their goal, and even modern Kraft Singles are still 98 percent real cheese, despite the scarily vague label of “pasteurized processed cheese food.” Others that share that category, well, they've got a little more wiggle room than most might like. According to the FDA, qualifying as “pasteurized processed cheese food” requires a simple majority, with at least 51 percent of the product being cheese, which leaves a distressingly wide 49-percent gap to fill.

Even those labels themselves are confusing, at least according to Professor Lloyd Metzger, who was interviewed about processed cheese for Wisconsin Public Radio’s Science Friday podcast. As Metzger explains, “You’ll see terms like pasteurized processed cheese, pasteurized processed cheese food, pasteurized process cheese spread and pasteurized process cheese product. And all of those products will be in the same category in the store. They’ll look very much alike. But the ingredients and how those cheeses were made will vary dramatically.”

So, what started as a smart bit of food prep by an early Kraft has evolved into an inscrutable knot of cheese-based technicalities. Overall, though, the answer to the question “when did cheese stop being real” is, well, it didn’t, but it’s certainly pushing the envelope.