Do Go On - Government Cheese - Do Go On Mini

Episode Date: July 20, 2020

Which page of history involves the dairy industry, the welfare system and multiple American presidents? Yes, this one goes all the way to the top, it's Government Cheese!Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/aI8wp3p_tosCheck out the new season of Listen Now: https://play.acast.com/s/listen-now/Our website: dogoonpod.comSupport the show and get rewards like bonus episodes: patreon.com/DoGoOnPod Submit a topic idea directly to the hat: dogoonpod.com/Submit-a-Topic Twitter: @DoGoOnPodInstagram: @DoGoOnPodFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoGoOnPod/Email us: [e-mail] out our other podcasts:Book Cheat: https://play.acast.com/s/book-cheatPrime Mates: https://play.acast.com/s/prime-mates/Listen Now: https://play.acast.com/s/listen-now/Our awesome theme song by Evan Munro-Smith and logo by Peader ThomasReferences and further reading:https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wn7mgq/wtf-happened-to-government-cheesehttps://www.history.com/news/government-cheese-dairy-farmers-reaganhttps://www.tastecooking.com/tyranny-comfort-government-cheese/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_cheesehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/food/1981/12/17/the-big-cheese-storing-the-surplus/0e54d36a-4bd9-416a-a773-55d40ea8fd74/https://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/23/us/surplus-cheese-goes-to-poor-as-president-signs-farm-bill.html

Melbourne and Canada, we got exciting news for you. And we should also say this is 2026. Jess, what year is it? 2026. Thank God you're here. Right now, I'm in Melbourne doing my show with Serenji Amarna, 630 each night at the Cooper's Inn Hotel, having so much fun. We'd love to see you there.

Canada, we are visiting you in September this year. If you've somehow missed the news, we are heading up Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, and Toronto for shows. That's going to be so much fun. Tickets for all this stuff, I believe, are online. And I'm here too. Hey mate, it's Matt here. Just letting you know, this is the final episode of our web series of Do Go On,

which you can check out on the Stubed Old Channel. Link in the show notes. We've done nine different topics, including killers, scandals, icons, war heroes and egg boys. And, yeah, listening to them is good fun, I'm sure. But if you want to watch and see our stupid faces as well as some animations and other things, you can check it out via the link below. But yes, this is the final episode coming up. I'll let me explain it more in a moment.

I'd also love to let you know that another one of the podcast from the Dugawon podcast Network has launched season two today. It's called Listen Now. It's with me, Matt Stewart, my cousin, Sam Tonkin, and we go through classic albums. This season, we're going through classic 80s rock albums, and we got listeners to vote on their favorite. So we're counting down the top 20.

80s rock albums as voted for by the listeners starting today with Huey Lewis and the newsers sports having a look through the 20 albums it's a wide range that's going to be a fun ride so why not join us over at Listen Now Pod i'll put a link to that in the show notes as well and yes anyway let's get on with this episode of do go on about government cheese take it away me which page of history involves the dairy industry, the welfare system, and multiple American presidents. Yes, this one goes all the way to the top. I'm talking about government cheese. Oh my gosh, welcome to the show.

And my very special guest this week, I've got Jessica Perkins and David Hornikey. Good evening. And who are you? Oh, I'm Matt Stewart. Is that important? Yeah. Do the people have a right to know? Oh, well, they have a right to know as much as you are willing to live.

let them know. Okay, well I'm going to go with Mr. Stewart then. Okay, great. I don't want to let let them know that my first name is Matt. Yeah, cool. Let's not tell them that your first name is Matt. Okay, can you edit that bit out? Just bleep the Matt's there, including that one then. Thanks, Evan. Actually, bleep out Evan as well, because I don't want them to, you didn't give me permission to let them know who you are either. Are we allowed to say your name Matt or is that beat? No, that's fine. Okay. So we can say Matt, but you can't say, but you can't say it. Because if I say it's me, but if you say, it could be anyone. Sure. How do I know You got a guy behind you.

Bleep that one out as well because he also hasn't given permission to say his name. Anyway, this week, I'm going to tell you all about the story of government cheese. Am I saying that right? No, but I'm loving it. Government cheese. Have you ever heard of government cheese? It's a very confusing topic. Like, the concept is confusing to me.

Okay. So I can't wait for you to unconfuse me. To me, it's very appealing because there's two. things I like in this world. It's cheese and government. Oh, me too. When I saw it suggested, I'm like, what did you just do? Cizzed. All right. Government and cheese finally coming together. Yeah, scissoring. What are you? No, I was just asking. I just wanted to clarify. Clarification. That's all. Wasn't able to go. Okay. I hope not. What you did was fine, Dave. Thank you. Matt. Let us begin. The US government-owned commodity credit corporation was given

authority to purchase dairy products from farmers in 1949 to help prop up the dairy market and keep farmers afloat. Oh, okay. So they're just buying up dairy? Well, they're allowed to now. Does that answer just a question already? Well, that sort of solves it, doesn't it? Right, so it's government cheeses. They bought a bunch of dairy products. Yeah. Okay, cool. Well, sort of made the next few paragraphs a little bit superfluous now that you understand it already. But anyway, let me... Yeah, just in case. Just in case. I mean, some of them probably aren't as quick as you. You're like this. Not many people are. What do they like?

They're like, click. They say click before the click. Wow. They're stupid. Resulting from a shortage of dairy products, in 1973, the price of foods like cheese shot up by around 30%. The government got involved, but this backfired, as the intervention was partially responsible for the price of dairy going the other way, dropping super low.

In 1977, under freshly elected President Jimmy Carter, The government injected $2 billion into the industry in a four-year period. That's a lot of money. It's a lot of short period of time. A lot of cheese you think. Too much. People call it bread and stuff. Does anyone call it cheese?

That's a lot of cheese. Maybe they should. If not, they should, yeah. A bit of Bree on time? It starts now. Oh, you got any Bree? I'm talking about Camerbet, man. You owe me five cheese of Camper.

So through the same. 70s, dairy farmers had yo-yoed between being broke and then flush with cash. But after this latest invention, they were flush once again. They could now sell as much milk as they were able to produce and the government would buy whatever the market didn't. What did the government do with all this milk they were buying? Well, they turned it into products with the longer shelf life. Things like butter, milk powder and yes, cheese. Okay. So, You got quite aggressive. Yeah, sorry that we were giving.

I'm so sorry if we were giving a vibe so we did not believe you. Yeah, get to the cheese. You're promenous cheese. You promidous. You promidous cheese. Now bring us to cheese. I don't want to hear of milk powder, government milk powder.

Yuck, whatever, butter. Get out of here. Cheese, I'm listening. Not classic cheese, admittedly. That wouldn't have made much sense. What do you mean? What do you mean by classic cheese? Not your classic cheese.

String cheese? They're making fucking bigger stringers? Well, you're closer to the point because normal cheese also doesn't have a super long shelf shelf. Hang on, so there's classic cheese, there's normal cheese. Well, normal cheese and classic cheese are the same. Right. You know, you can, yeah, coming together. Process cheese is what they were making.

Also known as plastic cheese or cheese product. Oh, that's not good. Slice me up some of that product. Can I have five kilos of cheese product, please? Yeah, all right. Well, you want to get involved in government cheese. Processed cheese is made with regular cheese, with the addition of other products like weigh, emulizers, preservatives,

and that delicious food colouring. Can we make it yellow? Make it more yellow. Make it such an unnatural yellow that there's no question that it's not real cheese. Yeah, oh yeah. And often over there it's orange. Yeah, American cheese is orange. orange or Jack cheese.

I don't think you can call it that. Oh. That doesn't sound good. Only Jack. Yeah. Oh, that is confusing. Legally processed cheese is not allowed to be sold as cheese in America and has to be labeled as cheese food.

But it has many benefits over regular cheese. The most relevant in this case is its longer shelf life. Admittedly, it still didn't last forever. But it did last longer than normal cheese because of the preservatives and the emulizers, whatever they. Do you know what the other benefits? I can't think about the other benefits. Well, I mean it's more consistent.

They know exactly what it's going to do because it's been created by science. Yeah, rather than leaving it to nature. The art artists in the bloody dairy industry, these hippie-dippy types. Oh yes, we let the blue veins go wild. Notin cheese product. As the farmers produced more and more milk,

the government started to have so much dairy product. They didn't know what to do with it. Eventually, they had as much as 500 million pounds of processed cheese. Where is it? It was stored across 35 different states in all sorts of storage facilities. How much again, sorry? 500 million pounds.

That's too much. The Indian giant sheds are they guarded by like the army or something? Yeah. So they actually made security guards out of cheese. They had so much. They just put sunglasses on a glob of cheese. Cheese protecting cheese. It's like the terracotta army.

This is a terra-chotter. the terra-chatter-rame. No, no two soldiers were alike. Yeah. No, that was the thing with processed cheese. They were all exactly the same. Consistency was key. You know what you're getting? Yeah.

Are they all called Jack? Yes. They're all Jack. Eventually, they, yeah, they had as much as 500 million pounds. That's so stupid. So much. And in 1981, when a member of the United States Department of Agriculture was asked, what should be done with all the cheese,

he told the Washington Post, quote, probably the cheapest and most practical thing to do would be to dump it in the ocean. That's the cheapest. Imagine wet cheese. Oh, you're probably not going to eat it after that, eh? No. The fish like cheese?

Salty. Oh, yeah, fish love cheese. Who doesn't love cheese? It's the most practical. That's a lie. I didn't like cheese for a long time. I think, yeah. I was late to cheese.

Oh. I'm making up for it. I was early to cheese. I've never left. By this stage, they had more than two pounds of cheese for every person in America. It got to the point that the government was storing so much cheese that they basically started paying farmers to not produce it. They did this by buying their cows.

Ah, that'll do it. Yeah. We'll just, we'll take those and put them in a storage facility. It's guarded by men made of cheese. No, men made of cows. Very important. This distinction. America was drowning in cheese, though this wasn't really known publicly

until Secretary of Agriculture, John R. Block. No. Block of cheese. He brought one of the five-pound bricks of deteriorating cheese to a White House event, showing it to the assembled press and stating, we've got 60 million of these that the government owns. It's moldy. It's deteriorating.

We can't find a market for it. We can't sell it. And we're looking to try to give some of it away. He was freaking out. He brought it to the White House. They're having a forefront. function. Yeah, there's serving hors d'oeuvres and people like, oh, cheese.

He's like, don't eat it. It's disgusting. But take it home. So they're like a huge brick. Build your homes with it. I don't care. Sort of like gold bullions. Yeah, of cheese.

Yeah, they just piled on. That's gross. Ronald Reagan became president in 1981 and the early 80s were dogged by recessions. Despite this, Reagan pledged to reduce the federal food stamp program. In light of all this, news of huge government food stamps. store sitting unused didn't go down well with certain segments of the American people. And pressure grew on Reagan to release the cheese. Is that a campaign?

Release the cheese. Release the cheese to the people who needed it. It sort of, it does seem like that. It makes sense. You've got all this cheese. We're going through a recession. People are hungry. Give them cheese.

No, but honestly, I still think the cheapest and easiest thing to do would be to dump it in the ocean. Yeah, that makes the most sense, I think. By December 1981, Reagan bowed to these press. saying, at a time when American families are under increasing financial pressure, their government cannot sit by and watch millions of pounds of food turned a waste, before announcing he'd release 30 million pounds of the cheese to those who needed it. This signalled the start of the temporary emergency food assistance program, which started distributing five pound blocks of cheese to the elderly and low-income earners.

The error of government cheese was here. So the elderly and low-income. and they're just giving them cheese. It's part of it, yeah. They still get food stamps, and on top of what they were already getting, they would also get a huge block of cheese monthly. And you can do whatever you want with it.

Whatever you want. That's your choice. I mean, it sounds like you're probably going to do whatever you want with it because it wasn't the most versatile of cheeses. Apparently very good on a toasted sandwich. That's what I was thinking. Very good with macaroni. They need a hand out at like a cheese cookbook.

Yes, somebody, okay, somebody can make a cheese sandwich. Cookbook. Yes. Okay. Out of the cheese. Papers out. Yeah. Cheese is in.

They're not having like crazy cheese dreams. Like half of America just are losing their shit at night. I imagine so. Undocumented, but yeah, that was why a lot of crazy 80s things happen. Name an example and that would be a good opportunity for it. Your birth. Yes. That was because of American government cheese.

Parachute pants. Parachute pants. M.C. Hammer. Well, I thought I was being chased by wolves. I thought I'd put on parachute pants. Cheese dreams are a crazy thing. They're real. They're real thing.

Due to the nature of the cheese handouts, many remember it as a stinky symbol of the hard times they were going through and a pungent promotion of their lower socioeconomic status. Oh, that sucks. It's a well-written sentence, though. Yeah, beautiful sentence, poetry. But the image is sad. Yeah, it is. So it's some people look back of it with sort of mixed memories, like writer Bobby Dempsey.

who calls the cheese a day glow orange matter that provided equal parts, sustenance and humiliation. Oh, yeah, that's no good. Because if you were getting it, it meant that you were not earning enough to be able to fit. Yeah, okay. So in her essay titled The Tyranny and the Comfort of Government Cheese, Dempsey went on to write, In the school cafeteria, or when a friend came over and peered in the fridge, the cheese was a source of infinite shame,

a clear indicator of our financial situation. But she also remembers that when no one else was watching, my siblings and I like the cheese, or at least learn to tolerate it. My younger brother was probably the biggest fan, believing then and still now, that it made for the best grilled cheese sandwiches. Love a grilled cheese. Others look back on the cheese nostalgically, like food writer Tracy Lynn Lloyd, who wrote, If someone made me a grilled cheese with government cheese today, I probably couldn't eat it. it would be far too salty for my current taste.

I guess that's because of the ocean. Yeah, that'll do it. You have to fetch it out. But I'd still take one bite just for the memories. Yeah, right. So now she's progressed and her palate has matured. Now it's... Like a fine cheese product.

Only the finest cheese products for her. One angle we haven't discussed yet is that not everyone can eat cheese. Miles Karp wrote in an article for VICE that, According to the University of Georgia, 75% of African Americans, 51% of Latinos, and 80% of Asian Americans are lactose intolerant versus 21% of Caucasians. Because minorities historically have been heavily represented in welfare programs, the government wasn't really doing American butts a favor. Sorry, just again, an amazing sentence. Yeah, like it sounded out so like, oh, wow, really political, really scientific butts. Okay.

My husband is a way, doesn't he? You're not doing my butt any favours. Brought it back to our level at the end. Why don't you think a little bit more about my butt when you're making your government decisions? But isn't that? That's pretty amazing. Like, Caucasians with at one in five lactose intolerant

up to four and five Asian-Americans lactose intolerant. So it means the vast majority of people getting the cheese. Can't eat it. And if they do, it's, it's. distressing their stomachs and their butts. Yeah, and then that doesn't include vegans and people who just don't like cheese. Yep. Me as a child.

How did it taste, though? There's probably a question on your lips. Salty, I've heard. Yeah, but it also is often described as a mild cheddar. That's sort of a look. Some remember it being perfect for things like macaroni and cheese. And there are companies who still use it today. There's a burger chain called Walbergs who still use government.

cheese in all their burgers. I guess it's a nostalgia thing. For many American kids growing up in the 80s, government cheese was one of the main staples in their diet. But all good things must come to an end. And when the dairy market stabilized in the 90s, the government no longer had to hoard so much cheese. That's a bit sad.

That's a bit sad. What about all that cheese, you know? What could have been? Got Aiden, I guess. Aiton. Got Aiden. Got Aiden. That's not the word, is it?

No, that's right. If you think that was the end of it, though, you'd be wrong. Oh. Because in 2018, the Secretary of the Agriculture of Department, Sunny Perdue, announced that the Commodity Credit Corporation will once again be used to help subsidise the dairy industry by paying farmers up to $11 billion for their losses. That's for one farmer. One farmer.

Wow. Imagine being that one lucky farmer. Get $11 billion. What would you do with it? On down, Sean Casey. Yay. Who's Sean Casey or did you really just make that up? Oh, it's a farmer.

That feels like you've rigged the system. Is your friend of yours? Yeah, you did that with so much confidence. Yeah, I shouldn't have called him Uncle Sean Casey. Oh dear. Single uncle and I'm his favorite nephew, Sean Casey. I don't know that. I don't know that.

I don't know that. It's an accident. So in the 90s, the stockpile went right back down again. Right. But as of 2018, the National Cheese stockpile hit a new all-time high. What? With nearly 1.4 billion pounds of surplus cheese sitting in warehouses across America.

Why are they, why? Stop making it. I think, yeah, they get caught in a cycle of keeping dairy farmers afloat and then it seems like there's long periods where they aren't self-sustainable or whatever. So how much is there as of 2018? 1.4 billion pounds. Fuck me, that's so much cheese. It's a lot of cheese.

Yeah, it seems like a weird system. Yeah. It feels like there's got to be a better way, but then when they can find something good to do with it, like... If the system works, which it maybe does. Yeah. I guess, yeah. I should say, I haven't done any economics study since year 11 when I did fine.

Good to hear it. Good to you've got a real expert with us here. Oh, yeah. How'd you go on food tech with cheese? Oh, I failed. Failed miserably. So government cheese is now back. In 2018, Bobby Dempsey, who we heard from before, wrote,

Recently our family came full circle, as my mother began once again receiving the blocks of government cheese as part of food boxes distributed to low-income senior citizens. My mother's dietary restrictions prevent her from eating the cheese, so she passed it along to me and my sister. Seeing the same brick-shaped boxes I know so well, I immediately felt the old familiar contradictory mix of emotions. Shame plus something like reverence for this staple of my childhood

that provided my family with critical sustenance. Wow, that sentence didn't end with him talking about a butt. Yeah. Yeah, well, there's a different writer. The woman now with a different name. So that might be why. Miles Cart finishes all his paragraphs and parts. I'm so sorry I often confuse my butt writers.

Yeah. with cheese writers. That pretty much brings me to the end of the story. But there is a quick fun fact. Government cheese has been referenced in a bunch of different songs over the years, including ones by Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar. I'd never heard of it until very recently, but in America, it's a big thing.

And they call it government cheese. Government cheese. Huh. So fun. So fun. Yeah. I don't know. Because I can't, without being there, I can't fully get my head around it.

But as a kid who loves it. huge blocks of cheese. We were, you know, huge home brand blocks of cheese growing up. It sounds very similar to what I would have had in my fridge as a kid. Yeah. But yeah, that was, I didn't know shame. So I wonder if you too have matured in your palate for cheese. Uh, yeah, I think so. I think I have. Okay, quick fire around. Favorite cheese? Uh, blue cheese. Favorite cheese? I love, I love a hard cheddar, big cheddar. I had a sharp, a sharp cheddar. Yeah, I had one that was, um, I had vinegar through it the other night, and it was delicious. What?

Yum. Jess, your favourite cheese? Bree, double Bree. Get out of here, triple Bree. He's just doubling. Bree, double-bre, triple-bre. Eight times Bree. Oh, no, cheese! You got me? I don't like cheese at all.

The liar! Well, that's it for government cheese. This is a spin-off of our podcast, do go on, with over 200 episodes to listen to. If you like this topic, check out some of our other food-related episodes like The History of McDonald's, the Great Maple Syrup Ice Cream Walls. Subscribe for free on your favourite podcast app and be sure to subscribe to this channel to check out our other videos. Why didn't you mention our episode on Government Cream? Oh, that was an oversight. Too risky for podcasting.

We've also done an episode on Vegermite. and Coca-Cola which is like a liquid food in some ways I think in some parts of the world they'll call it a drunk I think is how you say it

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