
American Cheese Surplus Reaches Record High - tshannon
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/09/683339929/nobody-is-moving-our-cheese-american-surplus-reaches-record-high
======
danans
The shifting preference patterns around cheese type are very tangible. In my
own case, my kids have never had the kind of individually plastic-wrapped
processed orange cheese slices that I grew up with. No Velveeta style either
(unless it was on nachos at a fair).

And we mostly buy domestic cheeses, of which there are many suppliers who make
higher quality varieties. Tillamook, Cabot come to mind, and one of my
favorites, Milton Creamery's Prairie Breeze Cheddar.

Apart from these cheeses being objectively tastier than the cheese of my
childhood, the power of social trends is strong, and people across the country
have taken on to the "whole" foods trope in the past several years, no doubt
urged along by the influence of celebrity chefs and new cuisines that have
entered the US via immigration.

Interest in higher quality food is one of things that, despite polarization in
other spheres, has become fairly consistent between the coasts and the middle
of the country.

~~~
monksy
The american processed cheese has it's place. It's on hamburgers. There aren't
a lot of cheese that work well for that.

There are a lot of domestic cheeses that are good. You can find nearly every
type of cheese being made by at least one cheese maker in Wisconsin.
(Distribution is a completely different story)

~~~
ItsDeathball
I find cheddar and pepper jack work as well or better on a homemade burger,
but Kraft "cheese" slices are still irreplaceable on one thing, which is the
grilled cheese sandwich. The ideal grilled cheese is made with American
cheese, mass-produced white bread, and lots of butter. You can use better
ingredients to try to make it fancier, but hit diminishing returns pretty much
immediately.

~~~
citizenkeen
Barf.

As someone who cooks grilled cheese sandwiches for a family twice a week, and
likes to experiment, I can tell you that cheddar or gruyere, mass-produced
white bread, and lots of mayonnaise, is preferred by some.

And someone else will chime in with something else. I don't know what the
'ideal' grilled cheese sandwich is, but I'm willing to wager a lot of people
think it isn't made with American cheese.

~~~
hnick
> mayonnaise

Never tried that. My ideal is bechamel sauce with cheese on top - shredded for
the added surface area when browning. This is based on a typical croque
monsieur recipe. It's very easy to make bechamel in about 10 minutes and it
keeps for a week or more in the fridge without issues.

------
wil421
>Support, in its various forms, equaled 73 percent of U.S. dairy farmers’
market returns in 2015. [1]

For the other commenters and viewers who were wondering about subsides.

[1][https://amp-realagriculture-
com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.r...](https://amp-realagriculture-
com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.realagriculture.com/2018/02/u-s-dairy-
subsidies-equal-73-percent-of-producer-returns-says-new-report/)

~~~
bryanlarsen
It's worse than that; that study only counts things that benefit American
producers vis-a-vis Canadian ones. For example, American corn subsidies
depress the global price of corn, benefiting both American and Canadian milk
producers.

------
thieving_magpie
Tangential story, who remembers when the US government "accidentally created a
cheese surplus so large it had to be stored in a ginormous cave."

Great podcast on it from Planet Money:
[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/31/643486297/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/31/643486297/episode-862-big-
government-cheese)

~~~
cronix
I remember in the late 70's, or early 80's (I was a kid so don't remember
exactly), when my grandmother went on Social Security she got cheese and
butter regularly from the government. It was actually quality stuff. I believe
it was possibly due to what you're talking about.

~~~
thieving_magpie
Yes, they call that "government cheese". I can't speak to the quality but
there are people out there that still try to find things that are close to the
government cheese quality they loved as kids.

~~~
linuxlizard
My family had government cheese growing up. Was very very soft, only lightly
more dense than cream cheese. Was hard to cut because was too hard for a
butter knife but too soft for a carving knife. Taste was like a blander
Velveeta. Was not terribly tasty in cold sandwiches but it made THE BEST
toasted cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches. Melted very well and tested best
melted.

------
ChuckMcM
We could start stacking it up along the southern border :-) More seriously
though it seems to me that we could use with more cheese factories that make
"exotic european" cheese, I much prefer a Camembert after dinner than slices
of American. The Marin Cheese Factory[1] is a good example, more of those
would be nice.

[1] [https://marinfrenchcheese.com/about-us/visit-
us/](https://marinfrenchcheese.com/about-us/visit-us/)

~~~
ericd
Would definitely be nice to have more local producers. Cowgirl creamery makes
some really good cheese, but it's stupidly overpriced, and they could use some
more competition.

I was excited to try Marin's Camembert based on the idea of it being a local
producer of real French-style cheese, but I've actually been very disappointed
in the couple wheels I've tried. Tasted really dull and dry compared to
d'Affinois (which is pretty commonly available and pretty reasonably priced)
or real French Camembert (which is pungent enough that you should never cut it
in a public enclosed space, but I've found it harder to find the good stuff).

~~~
thatfrenchguy
You can’t find real Camembert in the US, it has to be unpasteurized and it’s
aged less than 60 days which doesn’t pass agricultural rules.

~~~
ericd
Ah, well, that explains the difficulty :-)

------
crushcrashcrush
Reading between the lines here: the American cheese “product” isn’t very good,
and consumer tastes have shifted. Also, I assume the dairy industry is heavily
subsidized by the US govnerment?

~~~
bryanlarsen
American cheese is cheap. And when you have an oversupply of milk, you have to
either dump it or turn it into something that can be stored for later sale.
Thus cheap cheese.

~~~
tomschlick
So what you're saying is that blocks of cheese are milk batteries. I like it.

~~~
mrguyorama
Not at all. Once milk is turned into cheese, it's not really possible to turn
it back, or into other dairy products

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Are you sure about that? Has anyone tried? I mean, there was that one time
that guy accidentally figured out how to uncook eggs:
[https://www.smh.com.au/technology/australian-scientist-
wins-...](https://www.smh.com.au/technology/australian-scientist-wins-ig-
nobel-prize-for-uncooking-an-egg-20150918-gjpq12.html)

~~~
mrguyorama
Now that sure is an interesting development! However, in cheesemaking, some of
the ingredients and byproducts are discarded as part of the process, so you
could not recover that for the original milk

------
benj111
This is like the EU butter mountains of the 90s.

Except I found no mention of subsidies. Is that not a (the) factor?

------
crispyambulance
Oh, by "American Cheese" they don't just mean cheese made in America, they
mean the actual rectangular blocks of processed yellow cheddar-like stuff with
mild flavor?

Seems like a waste to just store it as yellow tasteless bricks, can't the
industry branch out into more interesting and varied cheeses the people will
actually buy?

------
Johnny555
Some of the best cheese I've ever had was decades ago when there was another
cheese surplus and the government was giving it away. My grandparents got some
from some senior citizen group, and it was delicious. I remember it being some
kind of cheddar cheese. They had more cheese than they could handle -- they
had like 4 5 pound blocks of cheese, so they gave most of it to my parents.

Though I was in my teens at the time and prior to that my idea of fine cheese
was individually wrapped slices, so I'm not sure what I'd think of it now when
I barely consider processed cheese slices to be "cheese".

[https://www.history.com/news/government-cheese-dairy-
farmers...](https://www.history.com/news/government-cheese-dairy-farmers-
reagan)

------
irrational
We had grilled cheese for dinner last night - just doing our part to use up
the surplus.

------
RickJWagner
I remember when the US government distributed cheese to low-income families.
It was a good move-- it moved product from farmers, and it fed the hungry. The
cheese was good, too. My family had some.

------
jmull
HN is making me hungry tonight. Mmmm I need a grilled cheese sandwich now.

------
DeonPenny
The great american cheese debt bubble.

------
mikhailfranco
So that's what they do with all the harvested oceanic plastic.

------
equalunique
Had cheese for lunch. Doing my part. How about you?

------
kkhire
Go Vegan!

~~~
ArrayList
Heck yeah. Best thing I've ever done

~~~
walshemj
Hope your taking your supplements and keeping an eye on your biochemistry

------
ArrayList
Perhaps a lot of folks are starting to wake up and go vegan, too, which would
contribute to the "cheese surplus" (opting for cashew cheeses and other
cruelty-free, delicious options.)

~~~
Retra
Perhaps some real-world data could support or refute that hypothesis. Though
if Veganism is every going to be a proper religion, that sort of rationalism
may undermine it.

