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The highest quality American cheese is cheddar and Colby melted and mixed with sodium citrate, which serves to keep it from splitting when melting.
It's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and if you've had a nice macaroni and cheese it was quite possibly made with a similar process by the chef, since sodium citrate is a perfectly common cooking ingredient.American pasteurized prepared cheese product, aka kraft singles, aka American cheese as most people know it, is very affordable, and is engineered to melt good. It solves the problem of a lot of Americans know it's crap but it's not a "proper" grilled cheese sandwich like they had as a kid with anything better, and the same goes for cheeseburgers.
The original American cheese was a cheddar made in America made with annatto because we didn't have the bacteria that made cheddar have it's color.
But most of your question is answered by "it's cheap to make and buy, and for whatever reason a lot of Americans like it". Most of what people call American cheese isn't actually even labeled as such, which makes these conversations fun. It's usually labeled "singles American flavor". No one buys the other stuff though, because it's slightly more expensive, by nearly 50¢.
I won't touch "pasteurized processed cheese food," but goddamn do I love some deli American cheese. On occasion, I can find an extra sharp one, for great justice.
Worry not! Most modern American flavor singles no longer meet the criteria to be called a pasteurized processed cheese food, and are strictly called "pasteurized prepared cheese product", which is a legally meaningless string of words that only advertised that it contains cheese, and is pasteurized.
It's a vaguely surreal labeling situation.
It's a shame that a lot of people don't realize that "processed cheese" usually just means "melted", not "chemical nightmare".
Your post made me curious, so I did a quick search. Apparently, to qualify as cheese, American cheeses only need to be 51% cheese. Not that this is probably the best source: mashed article
So that article is indeed a little "shock bait"-y. I skimmed the FDA regulations to the best of my ability.
There's actually three four types: Processed cheese, processed cheese food, processed cheese product, and prepared cheese product.Processed cheese is around 90% cheese. It's what you get if you melt cheese and add anything to it to keep it from splitting, as long as it's not much at all, and the additive is something like "cream", an acidic salt or something like that.
Processed cheese food is the same, but you can use more other ingredients, and a wider variety, like dehydrated milk, and it has to be at least 51% cheese.
Processed cheese product is the same as processed cheese food, but can be less than 51% cheese.
Prepared cheese product has no FDA standard of identity and can contain anything FDA approved for consumption in any proportion, as long as there's something in the ingredients that's cheese.
The best part is that you can find all of these right next to each other at the store, and they'll all look and be casually called "American cheese".
Kraft singles are the latter, because they got in trouble for using an additive that the FDA doesn't consider a dairy food (milk protein concentrate).
Most other "singles" are food or product.
The non individually wrapped slices or bricks are most likely to be just "processed cheese". They might also be called "deli style" so they can charge a little more.Thank you! I was wiped out after driving a disabled neighbor around all day yesterday so I didn’t put much effort in my search. Like beer, I call it “cheese” with caution. I don’t know that any American-produced cheese actually uses rennet rather than whatever chemical imitation. I am well aware there is a huge difference in taste, having had the opportunity to have had imported cheese a time or two. But I obviously don’t buy it, with budgetary and other constraints. I’ve recently started buying American produced cheese either sliced, or block to shred myself. It’s just better without cellulose and rx antifungal.
Oh, there's plenty of American cheeses that are basically the same as any other European cheese, but we have the difference that we either need to use pasteurized milk, or age the cheese at least 60 days.
We had a much worse time with listeria outbreaks around the time that food safety regulations were being put together, so our rules are a lot more strict for dairy products.This can impact the flavor, but honestly the reason imported cheese tends to be better is because you don't import cheap cheese, you import nice cheese.
Cellulose is only in shredded cheese, and it's benign. It's naturally occuring in every plant, and humans can't digest it. It's commonly referred to as "dietary fiber", which is why they can use it as an anti clumping agent in shredded cheese. You're already eating it and it's entirely inert.
Antibiotics are also a bit overblown in the US. When it comes to what arrives to the consumer, the US and the EU have compatible regulations. The biggest difference is actually cow breed, which impacts milk composition.
They’re compatible largely because of trade pressures applied. And pre-shredded cheese wreaks havoc on my stomach. I’ve had stomach issues for most of my life so imo a happy gut is a happy me.
Oh, yeah. Don't eat food that makes your gut sad!
It's my understanding that "cheese food" is a technical term similar to "cheese product" but is actually worse than "cheese product".
Processed cheese product means it's less than 51% cheese, and processed cheese food is more than 51%.
The key part is that there's no definition for "prepared cheese product". The regulations are specific in the wording, and even the text layout that you can use.
The reason for the switch is the inclusion of milk protein concentrate, which the FDA doesn't list as an acceptable dairy additive for anything that wants to label itself cheese of any type.
Well, back in my day ...