What Is American Cheese Really Made Of?

Processed American cheese is super cheap, consistent, shelf-stable, and orange. Christian explains how this science cheese is made.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works, Hey, brain stuff,
Christian saga. Here. Humans have been making cheese for at
least seven thousand years. It is, after all, an efficient
and tasty way to preserve nutritious milk beyond its normal lifespan.
But cheese can be expensive, inconsistent from batch to batch

(00:25):
in some varieties don't last a whole lot longer than milk.
And have you ever tried cooking with it? Let's say
you want to make nacho dip. Everybody wants to make
nacho dip. But when you heat regular cheese, the fats
can melt away from the rest of the cheese solids,
leaving you with a pool of oil and a lumpy,
stringy mess. Enter processed cheese, of which American cheese is

(00:50):
a particular type. This stuff is consistent by design, has
a longer shelf life, and is usually cheaper than natural cheese,
while melting like a dream. But how what arcane science
imbued natural cheese with such unnatural properties? Well? Here in
the United States, the f d A is crafted an

(01:10):
exhaustively specific legal definition of processed cheese. The short version
is that it's a type of food made by pulverizing, heating,
and mixing actual cheese of one or more types with
an emulsifier into a homogeneous plastic mass. That's plastic as
in the physical definition, i e. A substance easily shaped

(01:33):
or molded. Processed cheese isn't actually made of plastic, but
it can contain water, salt, artificial color flavorings, and a
very long list of chemicals that would bore you to
tears on a podcast. The key to processed cheese smoothness
is the emulsifying agents, and emultion is a mixture of

(01:55):
two liquids that don't usually mix, like oil and water.
No matter how hard you stir or shake them together,
they'll separate back out, but emulsifiers make the two plain
nice chemically speaking. That's because they interact with both liquids,
grabbing globules of one and suspending them evenly throughout the other.
Cheese and milk, for that matter, is made up of

(02:18):
fats and fat soluble substances, plus a solution of water
soluble proteins and minerals. The added emulsifiers keep them blended
together even when they're heated. The other optional ingredients are
texture and flavor enhancers. Preservatives and cheese making shortcuts designed
to speed the manufacturing process along. It's science cheese, everybody.

(02:42):
But as long as the finished cheese has moisture, fat,
and pH levels that closely resemble those of its actual
cheese ingredients, the stuff can legally be called quote pasteurized
processed cheese, and if it's made from cheddar, washed curd,
colby or granular cheese, it can be called American cheese.
But you may have noticed some extra words creeping in

(03:05):
on labels, dubbing the stuff pasteurized processed cheese, food or
spread or product. Those designations indicate that other ingredients have
been put in that reduce the amount of actual cheese
in the finished food. Cheese food can contain additional milk,
skim milk, buttermilk and cheese whey. These lower the cost

(03:28):
and increase the meltiness. And that's not a real word,
but cheese food must have moisture, fat and pH levels
that are close to natural cheese and cheese product can
throw those rules right out the window, and cheese spread
may have added moisture sweeteners, starches, and moisture binding gums

(03:48):
or hydrocholoids to optimize spread ability. All of these creations
are required to consist of at least cheese. Check out
the brainstuff channel on YouTube, and for more on this
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.