Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - American Cheese

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy writer Bill Oakley (The Simpsons, 'Steamed Hams Society') for a look at why American cheese is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

American cheese, known for being melty, famous for being fast food-y. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why American cheese is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone because my guest today is Bill Oakley. Bill Oakley is on the show. Very exciting to me. He is an amazing comedy writer all around, part of many TV shows, the former head writer and showrunner of

The Simpsons, and he runs the Steamed Hams Society because he is the writer behind the Steamed Hams segment of The Simpsons that has taken on its own amazing life online and beyond. And Steamed Hams Society is a great place to discover food, talk about food, be excited about food. I'll let him plug it fully within the episode. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples,

acknowledge Bill recorded this on the traditional land of the Cowlitz, Clackamas, and Siletz peoples, as well as many of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, and acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and today's episode is about American cheese. American cheese is a patron-chosen topic. Thank you to Jimmy Rulo for that suggestion, also to Tony Fahey for the broader suggestion of cheese, because this is the first cheese ever covered on the podcast. And the stars really aligned here. You will hear how excited Bill is about it, how excited I am about it, and how much of a nice time we had talking about it together.

So please sit back or arrive at Principal Skinner's mother's house, despite his directions. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Bill Oakley. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Bill Oakley, it is so good to have you on the show. And I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. How do you feel about American cheese? I love American cheese. This is the perfect topic for me. I'm a staunch defender of it, as I am with other maligned products, such as mayonnaise.

And I feel like I am one of its most vocal defenders. But I don't actually know that much about it. So I'm very excited for this journey we're going to take down an American cheese road today. Oh, fantastic. Because I am not as much of an enthusiast as you probably, but I do like it. And I also knew very little about it before researching. Yeah, it's just around us in the United States and in fast food. And it's just going on.

Absolutely. And of course, please check out the Steamed Ham Society and also Bill's other reviews of fast food. Because I feel like most people in the U.S. have eaten it at some point just because they've eaten fast food. But it's also on all kinds of other stuff, too. Yeah. Well, let me jump in to say, yes, go to steamedhamssociety.com. It's not just fast food, all sorts of food, people from all over the country.

There's a Discord 24-7 discussion of, if you're the kind of person who is like, wants to tell people about something, this hot chicken sandwich you found in Memphis or some recipe your mom had that's amazing, the Steamed Ham Society is the place to do that. It's growing every day. It's very exciting.

We have secret menu items at places, restaurants, mainly in Portland right now, but expanding across the country. We have merchandise, we have live streams, we have all sorts of other things. So check it out. It is my pride and joy, steamtamsociety.com. Perfect. Yeah. And when you are defending American cheese, what do you say? What are your favorite things about it? You know, I'm stating the obvious here. It tastes good and it melts really well. It's the perfect cheese. Like it is the perfect cheese for a hamburger, which is the ultimate American food, is the perfect cheese for a grilled cheese. Although often on a grilled cheese, you can, you know, you get one layer of American cheese and then one layer of some other cheese,

whether it be cheddar or Havarti or whatever. But it is – it's a great base for that kind of thing. But ultimately, the reason is it's the absolute best cheese for a hamburger, period. And there's really no debate about that unless you're an opinionated weirdo who is like, I have to have Fontina cheese on my cheeseburger or it's not a real cheeseburger. That's – you can't have that. That's not a cheeseburger. I think I need to Google Fontina cheese. I forget what that is. Yeah. Who would do that? Ridiculous. Yeah. It's all about the melty standard, as you say. Totally. Once in a while. I mean, that's part of the thing about American cheese that was created

is it was created to melt well, you know, which a lot of other cheeses don't do. And it's to melt well and evenly and provide a certain flavor. And it's also – it's not that – I don't want to step on our investigation here. But it's also not a particularly weird product. Like people think it's made with chemicals. But in reality, it's just kind of a blend of cheddar and Colby cheese with some other milk products added. That's exactly right. Yeah. And there's like another version that is less that, and we'll talk about that. But so much of it is cheese. Like I've seen people or websites describe it as not real or, you know, some kind of

denigration as not even a thing that involves cheese, but it pretty much is cheese for the most part. Absolutely. And I think it's part of a larger cultural backlash against all this stuff that was invented in the 50s and 60s when America was really proud of its, you know, chemistry, better living through chemistry. And since then people have, and it's true that in the 70s, we had a lot of food, especially fast food that was loaded with chemicals and extended and textured vegetable protein and a lot of fake stuff that wasn't that good for you.

But American cheese is not one of those things. And it's gotten an unfair – it's gotten a lot of unfair attacks from food snobs who are still bent out of shape about the fact that it's not entirely, you know, it's not aged in a cave in France. Yeah, then it would be old French cheese. Totally different name. Exactly. Exactly. Well, there's a bunch of stuff to talk about with this cheese, so let's get into it. And on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating

numbers and statistics. topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And this week, that's in a segment called my baby tapes the morning pod. He counts from nine to five and then he tapes stats and numbers again to find things fascinating. And the name was submitted by Willow Tanager. Thank you, Willow. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit to SifPod on Twitter or to SifPod at gmail.com. That was terrific, by the way.

Thank you. I appreciate it. And the set of numbers here, it's about American cheese and cheese in the United States, like its overall role. First number is 33 pounds. And 33 pounds are about 15 kilograms. That's the average annual cheese consumption for an American adult. We eat about 33 pounds a year, which I guess feels normal.

I don't know how to take it. It just seems like what we're doing out here. Which I guess feels normal. I don't know how to take it. It just seems like what we're doing out here. The whole world of cheese and cheese eating is fascinating in terms of like the cultural demographics of how it happened. Like I feel like America was inhabited by Native Americans for most of history. And then immigrants began to come. And I don't think the Native Americans probably had all that much cheese, but it was the Germans, you know, honestly, it was the Germans and French

and Nordic immigrants who are the big cheese eaters. And that's why places like Milwaukee, which is, you know, was brimming with German immigrants are like, that's like cheese country, you know, and that's like the cheese heads, the Green Bay Packers are the cheese heads and all that stuff. But it's interesting also because other places like – when you think about cheese in Asia, especially Japan, cheese is a very different type of thing there. Like they have – obviously, they have a lot of dairy and cows there, but not nearly so – not even nearly so much. Like cheese, from what I've been able to determine, cheese is a little – it's thought of as more of a dessert type thing in Japan. And it's a little sweeter. It's thought of as more of a dessert type thing in Japan.

And it's a little sweeter. So whenever somebody, I get Japanese Doritos or whatever that are cheese flavored, they're always a little bit sweet, which is kind of blows my mind. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of like stuff like fruit that I think of as not a dessert because I'm used to cake. But like, yeah, many places, especially in Asia, they're eating savory or naturally sweet stuff for dessert. And it seems great. Like cheese for dessert. What a move. That seems like a pro move. Totally. It's also like, I think that, you know, because Japan in particular is a heavily seafood oriented, you know, diet, cheese doesn't go with seafood very well in most cases. I mean, you got got a few dishes like i guess there's oysters rockefeller and uh and the filet of fish which have cheese on them but in

general you don't see a lot of cheese and seafood mixtures that's also i think my main relationship to american cheese is that i feel like the tuna melt is a miracle it just works and i think it's because it's got a bunch of mayo and stuff to join with the cheese and team up. You're making me want one right now. I don't even like tuna that much, but a tuna melt, yeah, it sounds very appealing. Yes, that's part of the glory of American cheese is that when it gets all melty and gloppy and kind of creates a, I don't know how to say it, kind of a slurry of sloppiness. kind of creates a, I don't know how to say it, a kind of a slurry of sloppiness. Like when you make a, when you have a caramelized onions and cheese and they all, it all kind of blends together

on a burger, like the In-N-Out double-double animal style. That's, that's, it's unbelievable. It's so good. That's a, there's a great story in one of the sources for this episode. It's called The Science of Cheese. It's a book by a USDA research chemist named Michael Tunick. But he talks about one of the official words in a lot of like scientific descriptions of American cheese is plastic. And they mean plastic in the sense of like physics, like something that can melt and bend and be put over stuff. But a lot of people read that and think there are like craft singles wrappers in it or something, you know, like it's not, it's not plastic in the sense of eating industrial

containers. Yes. And that's another, that's another thing that is often lobbed at American cheese to deride it is that people think it's plastic or whatever. But like, again, it's another one of those things where in the forties and fifties and early sixties, people thought plastics was, people thought plastic was cool. This is in the movie The Graduate. You tell Ben Bradford to go into plastics. And now, and again, the backlash against all that stuff just has made plastic a dirty word. And furthermore, people are misinterpreting it as well. It's not plastic in the cheese. It's plastic in that it's flexible. Yeah. It's our industrial friend. I love it. Yeah, exactly.

And that discussion of the whole world, it leads into the next number here because the next number is about all cheese. This is the first episode of the show about any cheeses. The number is over 7,000 years. And over 7,000 years is a conservative estimate of how long humans have been making cheese. Because according to the Atlantic, cheesemaking is older than written human history.

The really, really brief version of how cheese is made is that you take milk and you add enzymes to make it curd and make it solid and then do more processes from there. And so, you know, world cheesemaking has pretty much followed the domestication of dairy animals. It's a long running thing. And it is the science of it. I only, I know I shouldn't jump the gun on some of this stuff, but I did do a little research on this topic, which I'm totally unfamiliar with. And rennet, you know, like a lot of cheese is made by using rennet. And this is where I'm thinking like, what were people, how did they discover this? Because rennet is the enzymes that come from the thinking like, what were people, how did they discover this?

Because rennet is the enzymes that come from the stomach of an unweaned calf. So somebody at some point was like, let's slice open this baby cow and combine the stuff from its stomach with the milk from its mother. Like that's, I don't know. It sounds kind of sinister to me. I mean, like how many hundreds of thousands of things that people combine before they finally hit upon the one that made cheese? Yeah. So many of these foods and everything he says exactly right. And so many foods, I feel like people wonder who is the first person to try that. And I also wonder with cheese, like how many people were kicked out of their society in the process of coming up with that? You know, How many people were kicked out of their society in the process of coming up with that? You know, like, you're nuts. Get out of the village.

I don't like you. You're nuts. You're a mad scientist and that smells terrible. Yeah. You're being very weird with animals and we just don't like you in the community anymore. Yes. Yes. And yeah, and there's no one origin location or date for cheese.

And yeah, and there's no one origin, location, or date for cheese. Some experts believe it started in Asia, and also that there was a key crossover when cheesemaking was introduced to the Roman Empire, like the Eastern End, and then they spread it. And then also, as you said, we think there was not a lot of cheesemaking in the Americas before the Columbian Exchange. And it's not that they couldn't have come up with it. It's just that other than potentially llamas, there were not a lot of domesticated dairy animals in these continents until they came over from Europe

and from Asia, Africa, elsewhere. Oh, wow. Because if you think of like cows, sheeps, goats, camels, water buffaloes, yaks, horses, those are all Europe, Asia, Africa animals until they come over. Yeah, yeah. I wonder if there is, I bet there's llama cheese. I bet, I'm virtually certain there's some sort of llama cheese, but whether it was invented, you know, 2,000 years ago or 400 years

ago would be an interesting question. Yeah, I, there was a, I'm going to link it, even though it's not an amazing source, there's a Reddit Ask Historians subreddit post where they cite like a 1500 Spanish account of queso made from llama milk. But it's Reddit and it's the best source I could find. So like, you know, anybody with a dairy animal, they pretty much came up with this wherever they had them in the world. There was just kind of a lack of dairy animals in parts of the world for a long time. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so like United States cheese was some of the first cheeses in some of those places, even though there were plenty of people. Right, right. That is, and it's, I also wonder what led various regions of Europe to develop different styles of cheese. You know, that also seems like a fascinating deep dive. Patrons picked American cheese, and I would like them to pick more cheeses because I want to know.

Like, I found out some stuff about cheddar in this process. It is like blue cheese. It's like, oh, no. Who was the daredevil that was the first one to, like, eat the blue cheese? It's like, we're going to—a lot—they had a really large assortment of rotten foods that people ate. And I assume it was somebody was probably like, we're starving. We have to eat this rotten food. And then discovered that it was delicious.

Maybe it's the guy who got kicked out of a community for cutting cattle open. And then he was like, what other stuff can I try in the next town? You know? I bet there were a lot of outcasts and loners that would pioneer these weird foods. And we thank them. The next number here, this relates to different European cheeses, too. The next number is more than one third. And more than one third is the amount of cheese eaten in the U.S. today that is specifically the cheese

on pizza. Like a lot of that weight and amount is just the cheese on top of pizza. I totally believe that. In particular, mozzarella. I totally believe that. It seems like, I mean, pizza is probably one of the top three or four foods in America of any type. And obviously it consumes a lot of cheese in that process. I would be interested to know what the breakdown, you probably know the answer to this, what the breakdown of cheeses eaten in America is. Yeah. So in general, American cheese, if you include both the high dairy kind and the low dairy kind. In general, that's the main cheese we eat. That's the majority. But in terms of one specific cheese type, until around 2001, cheddar was the most

popular cheese. And then in 2001, mozzarella passed it up, basically entirely because pizza had just become more and more popular over time. And there's another book going into this one is a book. It's called Cheese and Culture. It's by Paul Kinstead, who's a professor of food science at the University of Vermont. And he says that, like, we forget now, but as recently as the mid 1900s, pizza was seen as a relatively ethnic food in the United States. It was like, oh, that's what those Italians eat. And then as pizza has grown, grown, grown, grown, industrialized, industrialized, mozzarella grew with it. Totally. I mean, I've read a number of articles about this topic because it is fascinating to me. Yes, there's so many foods that... First of all,

the American diet was insanely bland all the way up to like about 1960. In most cases, even when I was a kid, we were still eating like liver for dinner and like that. And we didn't have, I don't recall ever having pizza as a kid. Maybe once, maybe, I mean, maybe once my parents didn't eat pizza because they were, you know, they grew up in the 30s and 40s. And they, so like the diet of America, we didn't have burrito. Like people who are under 50 don't realize how much the diet of America has changed and how broadened out it was. I never had any Thai food until I was in my 20s.

I never had any sushi until I was in my 20s, things like that. And I grew up – it wasn't like I grew up in the country. I do grow up in the country a little bit, but I lived in Washington, D.C., and there wasn't like a sushi place that I was ever taken to. Anyway, that said, back to the pizza thing. Yes, pizza, I don't think it even really took off in America until after World War II when GIs who had been stationed in Italy came back and were requesting. I mean, obviously, it had been served in Italian neighborhoods since Italian immigrants began arriving in the 1860s, 1870s. But then it was still considered a very ethnic food. People considered Italian food to be ethnic food,

which they don't anymore. Ravioli was a freak show to people in 1910. But that's like now, we don't consider Italian food to be ethnic food. So Mr. Burns, we've made some jokes about that with Mr. Burns on The Simpsons, as a matter of fact. Like donuts, he considered donuts to be ethnic food, which they probably were when he was young.

Anyway, so pizza didn't really take off in broad strokes until after World War II. And then even with the development of places like Pizza Hut and Domino's, popularizing it across the Midwest and so forth. Midwest and so forth. I love that even in DC, you didn't get that much, quote unquote, ethnic food. Because at some level, DC is full of diplomats and international travelers all the time. You know, like even there, it was like, no, the American food is burgers and roasts and then maybe some Italian food and Mexican food. Well, it's quite, I would suspect that there probably was a sushi restaurant somewhere, at least in DC that, but I was certainly never taken to it or aware of it. You know, we would go out, even we would have Chinese food maybe once every once a year, but like, even then like delivery didn't really exist that much either. Like, you know, people,

we didn't order out for the first time I ever had a pizza delivered was in college. So people didn't like, again, my parents grew up, we're not used to this kind of thing. Wow. That, yeah, that combination of seemingly ethnic food pizza, and then also a delivery person, like that must've felt like going to space or something. Like, can you believe the times we live in? Now I'm thinking of the moon pie line from the Simpsons, but you know what I mean? Totally. What a time to be alive. And I had, and I did have sushi and stuff. And I was like, it definitely was like, I felt like I was a fairly cosmopolitan person, but not at all.

Compared to even compared to the average person today who was aware of things like sushi and pad thai, I was not. Yeah. Wow. And that and that has changed, like the shape of cheese, among many other things. like the shape of cheese, among many other things. Like now, as of 2001, mozzarella, other than the broad set of American cheeses, is the most common U.S. cheese. It also turns out there's sort of a wrinkle

where there are Americans eating their pizza with mainly American cheese. In particular, St. Louis, Missouri, they have a regional pizza style where the cheese on the pizza is Provel. Oh, you know this. Yes. Of course.

I do, I do. This is the kind of thing I spend all my time doing now, especially on the Steamed Ham Society. I love it. There is a Provel is the pizza. That's what you get on your thin crust. There's so many regional pizza styles. St. Louis has its own pizza style, which is a thin crust tavern pizza, very much like you'd see in Chicago or Minnesota, except it uses Provel cheese. And Provel is this cheese that only is available in the St. Louis area that is somewhat, it kind of tastes like ricotta a little bit to me, kind of a combination of mozzarella and ricotta. Cool. And it's creamy. And people find it, some people find it very off-putting.

And it admittedly did shock me the first time I had it, but then I started to love it. And you can order the pizzas, if you're curious, by the way, goldbelly.com. You can order the pizzas from Emo's, which is St. Louis' most famous St. Louis pizza place. And it's worth trying. The first couple bites, you'll be like, this is weird. But then by the end, I was sold on it. I want more, you know? I'm so glad you've had it.

I was just reading about it on the internet. And also, the idea that it's tavern style. I'm from the suburbs of Chicago, and many people do not understand that we don't eat deep dish every day. We eat tavern style most of the time. And then deep dish is like Thanksgiving sized, you know, like you can't do that. Or when your relatives from out of town come, that's what I've been hearing. Yeah. It's like, that's for the tourists and for, and, and so forth.

But the tavern, I like the tavern style a lot more. It's so good. And, you know, with the party cut. Also, I didn't know the phrase until three years ago when I started getting into this food stuff. I never heard of the phrase tavern style and I never heard of the phrase party cut. But that's like, but now it's my favorite type of pizza. Because that's squares, right? Like you just do a bunch of tiny squares. Yeah. That's the best. And with all these cheeses, another source here is the chef J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. Yes, I'm friends with him.

In fact, we've done a number of things together. He's been in some of my videos, and I've used his recipes to make things, and I would say we communicate fairly frequently. But I did read this article. I think I know what article you're going to talk about, which is one from Serious Eats that he wrote about American cheese, which is the most comprehensive deep dive on this topic there is, I think. I completely agree. Oh, we're so on the same wavelength. This is good. And he seems great in general. And I particularly like his take on the concept of processed cheese. Because as we talk about Prevel or general American cheese or whatever, like we were saying, people think it's plastic or industrial or fake or something. But he describes the idea that all cheese is processed in a basic sense. Because, quote, even the simplest cheese like halloumi is made by treating milk with rennet

or increasingly vegetable-based enzymes with similar properties, draining the resulting curds, pressing them together, end quote. So, you know, like cheese does not happen in nature, basically. All of it is something we're doing on purpose. Yes. And also, as he says, the process, like the reason that American cheese has to have all that stuff on it that says like American-style processed cheese food is because of the FDA. has to have all that stuff on it that says like American style processed cheese food is because of the FDA. It's not because it's somehow fake. It's just that those are labeling requirements. That's right. And that brings us into one of the big takeaways for the episode. So let's get into it. Going into takeaway number one.

American cheese can be two main kinds of thing. A processed cheese that's mostly cheddar or a fat and oil-based food product that doesn't have milk in it. Now that's the kind that is probably worth criticizing. Yeah, it turns out like in the broadest sense any cheese made in the United States is American cheese. But it turns out there's a pretty big range between like the deli sliced kind that has the American cheese taste that can be primarily like milk and rennet and salt. And then there are some Kraft Singles style cheeses that go even further than Kraft Singles away from having milk in it. So there's a really broad range with this one thing. Right. There is, I mean, Kraft, I believe Kraft Single still has a lot of cheese. It's still mostly cheese or almost entirely cheese by any definition. There's milk, yeah.

But then I think there's a fourth, I believe in his article that he mentions there's a fourth category, which is the kind that's made with oil or whatever, that has no cheese or milk in it, which can't even be called... What do they have to call that? which can't even be called, what do they have to call that? It turns out that what food companies do is there are a few regulated phrases. And if an American cheese is 100% dairy-based, it can be called pasteurized processed cheese. And then it's pasteurized processed cheese food if it's more than 51% cheese and milk. But if it's less than that, there are rules for what they can call it,

but then companies will just reach for other totally unregulated phrases that sound good. So then it's the wilderness. It's the one, this is the one that is on the bottom of the list. Yes. There's all these other ones that start from the top. Pasteurized processed cheese, that would be your fanciest, such as, as he says, a boar's Head Deli Sliced American Cheese or Kraft Deli Deluxe. Then pasteurized processed cheese food. That's category two. That'd be Kraft Singles. Then pasteurized processed cheese spread, which are big blocks of stuff like Velveeta. Yeah.

And then we come to the basement, the cellar of this category, which is pasteurized processed American slices. Now, what word is missing from that phrase? Cheese. There's nothing. There's no cheese in that. And so that's the kind, that is the kind that you should be on the lookout for. I mean, obviously, it's much cheaper. So you could probably get that at the dollar store.

And, you know, in a pinch, it will work, especially, you know, if you don't want to spend a lot of money because cheese is expensive, uh, these days, but that said, it's not, that is the kind that, that people, you know, food snobs may be more justified in looking down upon. Yeah. And, and with this labeling, it makes it so hard to tell which is which, because there are rules for like the kind that has cheese, but once it doesn't have cheese in it, companies can get really loose in terms of what they describe it as. And then you're, you know, when you're looking at it physically, it's not super obvious. Totally. And that's, I would say the consumer, you know, caveat emptor, consumers, if it doesn't have the word cheese there at all, then you're in unknown territory. Yeah. And J. Kenji Lopez, he apparently dug into the Kraft Singles cheese amount and situation. And in 2003, they changed the label and changed exactly what they're calling it. Apparently, before that, they were calling it the phrase pasteurized processed cheese food, which legally has to be at least 51% milk. least 51% milk. Uh, but in 2003 they changed to pasteurized prepared cheese products. And I'll say that again, pasteurized prepared cheese products. They say cheese cause there is milk, there is actual cheese in it, but it's probably less than 50% at this point. Okay. But it's still

cheesy and it's still like the standard and it's, it's better than the, if we're going to judge it, it's better than like the dollar store kind. It's better than the kind that is no milk, usually vegetable oil. Like there were no cattle or other animals involved. It's usually like some proteins and solids and then vegetable oil. And that just kind of has the vibe of a cheese thing. Yeah. I will say as a person who experiments with a lot of foods

like this, I will say Kraft Singles are good. They are good. They're perfectly fine for everything. But if you want to take the step up, and this is also another thing I just learned really recently is like, there's a whole category of really good American cheese that is like Kraft Deli Deluxe is one of them. Those are the, you know, it comes, it's not Kraft Singles, it's Kraft and the slices are big and thick. I use them on all my cheeseburgers and they are, they're great. They're just like the kind you get at a deli. Now a deli, there's also, that's even better to some people.

They have like the Boar's Head and other brands of that you have to go to the deli and get sliced. Now those are probably the apex of it, but they're not significantly better than Kraft Deli Deluxe. That's a good tip. I have not had that. Yeah. And I'm glad they're out here doing the high, high, high kind. That's great. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And it's delicious. There's Land O'Lakes is another one that makes really good American cheese, but like there is a high end of American cheese. Craft Deli Deluxe is probably the low end of the high end. That makes sense. Okay. Bill, I know I said before, I'm really glad you're here. You think so much about this, I know I said before, I'm really glad you're here.

You think so much about this and you know it very well. I really appreciate it. I do think this is really, you really picked the perfect topic for me. And the, as far as like the nice, nice kind, as we said, it can be fully made of milk and fully from animals and fully top quality. What usually happens is a set of cheeses, primarily cheddar, also some Colby, are aged a little bit. Apparently they usually age cheddar about three months, which is a very, very mild cheddar. The sharp ones are a year or more. But they take young cheddar and combine that with water, salt, maybe some other flavorings and colorings. And then that gets put into a mechanical cooker that grinds, blends, heats, homogenizes the cheese. And so you get something that is milder than most cheddar,

but is also very consistent, very meltable, and has a long shelf life. And that's the process. That's what the word process means in processed cheese. And that was invented by James Craft, right? And it wasn't even a century ago, right? When was it? It was a little more than a century ago, but not a lot. Yeah, it was. Okay, so yeah, Kraft justifiably has its name, still has its name on that product, on hundreds of other products. But it was just processed is not a dirty word, despite the fact that it seems like it is.

It's a process. As Kenji says, making halloumi is a process. Any cheese making of any type is a process. Yeah. And also, if folks have heard a lot of this show, there are a bunch of episodes about various fruits and vegetables and produce. And I feel like every time I end up talking about the human labor and effort that goes into even an organic and theoretically not GMO version of like bananas or carrots or something else. Like humans have done a lot to shape that into something we eat. We're always processing. We love it. Yeah. Yes, totally. Next thing here is a big trumpet sound for a big takeaway. Before that,

we're going to take a little break. We'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie,

Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Boy, bringing up James Craft, let's go into takeaway number two.

American cheese was developed by an immigrant from Canada. Turns out James L. Craft was born and raised in Ontario before coming here. It's not surprising. I wonder if he's German. I mean, wonder if his lineage, did his family come over from Germany to Canada or from the Netherlands or some other place like that? It'd be interesting to know what his family history was crafted with, I mean, sorry, with cheese. Because like that, I mean, that has a lot to do with it and also his taste buds. I know. Yeah.

What was he searching for when he did this? Was it to make it have a longer shelf life or make it more transportable or just to make it meltable? What was the goal? I'm excited to have both the things. It turns out James L. Craft, his father is of German descent. And the family name originally had two letter F's in it. And they took one of the F's out to make it less Germanic. And the family name originally had two letter Fs in it. And they took one of the Fs out to make it less Germanic. Less German. Yeah. And as a Schmidt, I resent it.

Keep it German. Do it. But yeah, and then his goal, he had moved to the US in his 20s. And then he was running basically a little middleman business selling cheeses to grocers, in particular in Chicago. And like, yeah, profit margins are very tiny, they're very tight. And so he was looking for a way to utilize unsold cheeses and to use like scraps of cheeses. And so he was thinking, what's a process where I can just put all this together into a cheese I can still sell? And if there's a better shelf life or whatever, bonus. That's great. And he got a patent in 1916 for essentially American cheese, just like the process that makes American cheese.

So a little more than a century old, 1916. But he was a U.S. resident or citizen at that time? Yeah, he was here and I believe had naturalized. Yeah. So we got him. We beat the Canadians. All right. All right.S. resident or citizen at that time. Yeah, he was here and I believe had naturalized. Yeah. So we got him. We beat the Canadians. All right. All right. Good. You know, it's interesting. Also, when you read about this topic, there is a somewhat interesting back alley of American cheese prior to James L. Craft that was like, it's just really just from the Wikipedia page, That was like, if you, it's just really just from the Wikipedia page. Americans were making cheddar in some sort of way that was different in the 17, 1800s.

In some way that was different than that they were making it in Europe. And so they would, people in Europe and London and so forth would import American cheddar, as they called it at the time. I wish that I, and I bet there's probably some way to find out what American cheddar was like or what American cheese tasted like before, what was known as American cheese tasted like in the 1800s. Yeah. They, they talk about it a bit in Paul Kinstadt's book. And he says that it's the first American cheese factory.

I mean like a United States cheese factory opened in the 1850s. And then that's why we started overproducing a lot and shipping it out. And it seems like it was initially just English style cheddar, but then they figured out how to do what's called filled cheese, which is where you put in other stuff like oils. So we've also been doing this move to make it less milky for a long, long time. This goes back to basically as soon as we stopped only making cheese on farms as individuals. That is also fascinating. Oh, thanks. Yeah. And apparently factory cheese making within a couple decades immediately was more popular than

making it on a farm. Before 1900, it was pretty to find like cheese that was not made in a factory. Yeah. Yeah. I believe it. I think that's, you know, a lot of things happened around that era. To hamburgers, if I could go on for an hour about hamburgers, I'm sure you've already done an episode about hamburgers, but- No, I haven't.

They kind of grew up together, hamburgers and cheese. The short version is that hamburgers were considered a – hamburgers were looked down upon as a weird kind of food for – sold in the slums in the early 1900s because of the whole meat thing. Because of the whole Autism and Clare of the Jungle, meat was – a lot of meat was suspect. Right. And hamburgers being made from meat scraps, even more suspect. scraps even more suspect and it wasn't until the whole like from the late 1800s to around 1920 hamburgers were thought of as a gross food for poor people that nobody no decent person should be involved with and then white castle changed all that uh the guy who invented white castle was like we're going to transform this that's why white castle was called white cast it seems so

clean and they had all these rules for everything having to be clean you know that all the employees employees having to be well-groomed and have their nails trimmed and all this stuff. So that it seemed like it was, you know, it was like a hospital level of cleanliness, which kind of rebirthed the whole American hamburger scene, starting with White Castle and then proceeding on later after World War II to In-N-Out, McDonald's and so forth. That's incredible. I love that. I love that they were like, also, what evokes cleanliness and quality? Well, the sanitary color white and European chivalry. Obviously, knights and ladies. Totally.

That still holds true to some extent. And they, I would also, I should also say, this is another thing that is interesting. The cheeseburger was not, was also considered a freak show until like the late, until like the forties, pretty much because you didn't put like, it was a hamburger. And the best thing, if you, if you have a lot of time to spare, you can Google the first mentions of cheeseburger. The New York Times had, in the 1930s, had some article about some trip to culinary trip trip through California describing all the weird burgers that they had in California, one of which is the cheese burger, which was not known anywhere else and apparently had been invented by some enterprising person in California in the 30s. Although the history of that is very debatable.

Anyway, the New York Times' approach to it is worth Googling if you have five spare minutes. I love that it was like pineapples on pizza or something. Like, can you believe these nuts on the West Coast? Weird. And now it's so normal. You can't even like at McDonald's, they don't even have a cheeseburger. They don't even have a quarter pounder with no cheese on the menu anymore. I've run into that because I, possibly my worst food take is I prefer a hamburger with no cheese because you taste the menu anymore. I've run into that because I possibly my worst food take is I prefer a hamburger with no cheese because you taste the beef more. And there you go. Most places won't do it unless I bother them. Yeah. I mean, I think there is a I think that is a perfectly valid take. But I only use it. I only indulge that when I'm having a really fancy burger that's made from like,

you know, ground steaks or whatever. And I have had a couple of those at restaurants that were just blew my mind that was made from ground ribeye or whatever combination of ground ribeye and, and ground short rib. And then like, yeah, they serve the burger and it's like the flavor of the meat is just, the cheese would, would not improve it any, any further. Yeah. I want to celebrate the, the amazing meat I've got. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't say that necessarily holds true for the meat at fast food places though. The other thing I think is that the standard McDonald's cheeseburger is perfectly designed to rest in one hand because

the elements, primarily the cheese are all like hugging each other in a way that is so portable. It's great. It's absolutely one of the best foods for driving and eating. Like there's a certain level, like it's kind of hard to eat a quarter pounder or whatever when you're driving and not have bits of it drip onto your shirt. Yeah. McDonald's cheeseburger is not that,

like I find the McDonald's cheeseburger to be possibly the most satisfying food you can eat while driving. Yes. Of all fast foods. Oh yeah, I could fall out of a plane and eat that. Easy. Yes. Great. I do, I do. And let me say also people should get, driving yes of all fast foods oh yeah i could fall out of a plane and eat that easy yes great

like i do i do and let me say also people should get that i think if i could only eat one fast food item forever it would be mcdonald's cheeseburgers i never get tired of them uh and often when i get them i heard somebody did you know i get read about somebody doing this last year and i started doing it when you get a mcdonald's delivery order it's kind of expensive but it but ifortize it, you order 20 cheeseburgers and put them in the fridge, then you can amortize the cost of delivery. McDonald's cheeseburgers reheat pretty well in the microwave. And I think there's someone famous like Beyonce who has been advocating this. You buy them and you just microwave them for 20 seconds and they're about as good as they are. So I do that regularly. That makes sense. My my mind jumped to those

grocery stores that sell a box of White Castle sliders. So you don't have to go to White Castle. Those are good. It seems like it's the same. I've been to, I have been to White Castle three times in my life and none of the times has it been as good as the microwave White Castles, which are, I have been eating regularly since they were invented, I think in the late eighties. That's makes total sense. You don't, you're beyond the restaurant at that point yeah the uh last takeaway for the main episode here gets into a america's thing about this cheese takeaway number three the yellowish orange color of some american cheeses is an element that comes from the americas it turns out the principal food coloring for a lot of yellow american cheese

is a plant called annatto which is a shrub from central america wow i had no idea i've heard the word annatto i don't't know. I didn't know what it is. And is it used in like, cause there's white American cheese too. Is white American cheese the natural color of American cheese if it doesn't have annatto? Yeah. And they, sometimes they add like a tiny bit to make it less plain, plain white, but yeah, the entire difference between the, it's, it's a super common situation in the store when they're like do you oh you want american cheese do you want white or yellow the difference is adding a natto or not adding a natto that's it for summer so it's all in my head that the that the orange american cheese

has a stronger taste than the white i have the exact same mindset yes i that's how i feel about it i always get yellow it's it's the same okay all right good that's good I feel about it. I always get yellow. I it's, it's the same. Okay. All right. Good. That's, that's good to know. I will, I will get some white then I saw it in the store and shied away from it because I thought it was going to be too mild. Yeah. And it, it's also like a very natural food coloring. It turns out Anato, which I also found pronounced Anato various sources, but Anato is a food coloring made from seeds of the achiote tree, which is endemic to Central America. And I'll have pictures linked for folks. It produces really large seed pods full of bright red berries. And annatto gets used in all kinds of food coloring, and often it's something actually to make a food red. So they're using, I think, less of it to

generate a yellowish orange cheese. Isn't achioteota also a pepper or am I thinking of something else? Oh, that I don't know. I don't, I don't either. You do get annatto in a lot of, um, there's another Jake Angie Lopez alt thing. He says annatto is key in the dish cochinita pibil, which is barbecued pork from the Yucatan and the reddish color is the annatto in it. Yeah, that's so good, that dish. Yeah. And it's in like breakfast cereals, snack foods. Some cultures use it as body paint. And if people remember the episode of the podcast about chocolate, we talked about the drinking chocolate in the Triple Alliance, also known as the Aztec Empire.

And the Aztecs, when they used drinking chocolate, they often colored it red with annatto. And that also led to a mistaken belief among some Spanish invaders where they thought the Aztecs drank blood. They were actually just drinking reddish liquid chocolate, but I guess the Spanish didn't ask. They just judged them. Wow. Yeah. You and me and lots of other people, we have different mindsets about yellow American cheese and white American cheese. If you're a listener in Europe or Australia, this might sound very random, but it's almost

always sold both ways. And the difference is kind of one of the only elements of cheese that comes from the Americas in this case is this coloring. elements of cheese that comes from the Americas in this case? Is this coloring? Does, maybe you don't know the answer to this, but it's just, what kind of, what kind of profile does American cheese have overseas? Do people buy, is it available in stores and do people buy it or eat it or what kind of, how does it, like barbecue? So it's like, I'll see you ranch dressing, ranch dressing, perfect example of something

that we take for granted in America that they don't have anywhere else. Oh, awful. In other countries, they're unfamiliar with it and they don't have it at all practically. Or you got to go to one of those weird stores that sells American stuff like Froot Loops and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, which are few and far between. But I'm curious whether American cheese occupies that same, same space overseas as ranch dressing, or is it more well-known? Yeah, I, I think broadly that divide, uh, kind of there's, there's that divide of the super nice American cheese and the, uh, craft singles or less quality. I'm going to link an episode of

99% Invisible, which is an amazing podcast about all sorts of design and architecture and things. But they do one about the international aisle of US grocery stores. And the extra part is about the international aisle in foreign grocery stores that will often have like Heinz ketchup, Kraft singles, Cheetos, like other pretty specifically United States foods that are otherwise not in the rest of the store. That's interesting also because that has to be refrigerated too. So, you know, cheese, it's a special, doubly special section of international refrigerated foods, which we don't see very much here in our grocery stores. That's true. But it's true. I find due to my, in my

limited travels overseas, I have found that generally it seems like the burgers, unless you're going to an American chain, they seem to just use cheddar. This was very revelatory research for me because I've always definitely thought cheddar is my favorite cheese. And I think it's partly because I grew up on a lot of American cheese, which is made often primarily of cheddar. I've kind of been eating the same thing all the time, just different ways. Cheddar is a pretty fair substitute. Totally. I mean, I love extra super sharp cheddar for eating. I eat like little chunks of it with crackers or pickles or whatever. But I haven't really, you know, putting it on a burger is a nuisance. It doesn't melt right. And it's not, it doesn't taste that good. Yeah. Huh. It's, it doesn't have the qualities that we need from our American

processed cheese. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, and I also really like this annatto because we think of so many elements of food, but in particular food coloring as being very artificial. But it turns out annatto is just such an effective food coloring that it's like there are farms of this shrub-like tree where people just grow a bunch of it just for food production. And I checked my fridge and my current block of cheddar and also my Kraft Singles, annatto is in the list of ingredients. Like there are plants and seeds going into this

theoretically very artificial cheese. What we're saying is that American cheese is possibly the most wholesome natural food product there is. If you guys, if you didn't, that's your takeaway number four for this episode is like, you know, you don't need to go out and buy organic turnips or whatever if you want to have natural food. Have American cheese. Yeah. Also, both of us, just behind us, there are briefcases of, have American cheese. Yeah. Also, both of us, just behind us, there are briefcases of money from the U.S. dairy industry. It's going great.

We're loving it. I wish. I wish. We're doing all this promotion for them for nothing. Yeah. But I would like to be paid to promote cheese for them. Yes. Yeah, and also with, like, the history of making this cheese in general,

it turns out that it really did start as a make the most of scraps kind of cheese. And then it's become so popular now they're just entire dairies churning out entire shipments of cheese specifically to make American cheese. Like as it's risen, it's our deal. That's how hamburgers started too. That's, it's interesting. There's so many foods that are especially popular these days that started out from the hamburgers was just a way to grind, you know, leftover meat that you grind up scraps. Oh yeah. Buffalo wings are the same thing.

Buffalo wings. People didn't even, they would just throw away the wings before buffalo wings were invented. And that, you know, like it's a lot it's a lot of our most popular foods were garbage that some enterprising person figured out how to process into foods that now are popular. And they're not garbage no more. Now I want to shout out Rochester, New York on the garbage plate. It's different, but it's garbage food. Keep it up. Good job.

I'm dying to try that. I'm dying. I hope that somebody around here in Portland starts selling it. Also, I'm realizing I'm talking about upstate New York with Bill Oakley of Steamed Hams. Very fun to me. I'm really, this is a real treat. I've never been there, but I have made a lot of, gotten a lot of mileage talking about it. Bill, if you, you got to go to Utica.

I don't want to order you around, but if you go to Utica, you will be paraded through the streets as a king. It's just out there for you. Okay, well, if that's really true, perhaps I'll make the journey. Very exciting. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Bill Oakley for truly, truly being excited about this topic. We were so aligned about it. I think he's even more into it than I am. Just a real treat.

Anyway, I said that's the main episode, because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com, because patrons get a bonus show every week, this week's bonus topic really pretty much continues the topic. It is four short stories about processed cheeses. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of almost nine dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring American cheese with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, American cheese is two main kinds of thing. A processed cheese that's mostly cheddar or a fat and oil-based food that is not quite cheese.

Takeaway number two, the inventor of American cheese is an immigrant from Canada. And takeaway number three, the yellowish-orange color of yellow American cheese is the main element that comes from the Americas. Those are the takeaways. Please also please follow my guest. He's great. Once again, I want to point you to the Steamed Hams Society. Again, that is patreon.com slash steamedhamssociety.

It is videos, reviews, a Discord. It is a place to gather with fellow people who I think share, like, Bill's wonderful vibe, right? People who want to be excited about the foods that they eat and consume and discover and about all the various foods around us. I also want to recommend Bill's Instagram. He is at that Bill Oakley and has lots more food takes to share and other things, too. I'm going to link the steamed hams clip and segment sketch, whatever you want to call it, from The Simpsons. you want to call it, from The Simpsons. It was a wider episode of a lot of short, funny stories. And this one is Principal Skinner lying to Superintendent Chalmers to the point where he claims he has the Aurora Borealis located entirely within his kitchen. And also, Bill has an Audible original out. It's called Space 1969, written by him. You get a whole nother show

from him in your ears from Audible original. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. Maybe the most key source was an incredible, very in-depth piece for SeriousEats.com by chef J. Kenji Lopez-Alt that me and Bill were both excited about. Also, two books were really handy for me. One of them was The Science of Cheese, a book by USDA research chemist Michael H. Tunick. The other is called Cheese and Culture. That's by University of Vermont food science professor Paul Kinstead. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the buddhos band our show logo is by artists burton durand special thanks to chris souza for audio mastering on this episode extra

extra special thanks go to our patrons i hope you love this week's bonus show and thank you to all our listeners i'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.