BrainStuff Classics: What Is American Cheese Really Made Of?

Process cheese, often called American cheese, is super inexpensive, consistent, shelf-stable, and orange. Learn how this science cheese is made in this classic episode of BrainStuff.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Lauren boke obam Here, I've got something a little bit
different for you today, a classic episode of brain Stuff.
This is one performed by our prior host, Christian Saga,
with the original script written by me. What is what
is American cheese really made of? Hey, brain stuff, Christian Sagar? Here?

(00:28):
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 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

(00:51):
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 a particular type.
This stuff is consistent by design, has a longer shelf life,

(01:13):
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 exhaustively specific legal
definition of processed cheese. The short version is that it's

(01:34):
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 or molded.
Processed cheese isn't actually made of plastic, but it can

(01:56):
contain water, salt, artificial color, flat rings in a very
long list of chemicals that would bore you to tears
on a podcast. The key to process cheese smoothness is
the emulsifying agents. And emulsion is a mixture of two
liquids that don't usually mix, like oil and water. No

(02:17):
matter how hard you stir or shake them together, they'll
separate back out. But emulsifiers make the two play 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
fats and fat soluble substances, plus a solution of water

(02:39):
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,
But as long as the finished cheese has moisture, fat,

(03:03):
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
on labels, dubbing the stuff pasteurized processed cheese, food, or

(03:28):
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
and increase the meltiness. And that's not a real word,

(03:50):
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
or hydrochloids to optimize spread ability. All of these creations

(04:11):
are required to consist of at least cheese. Today's episode
was produced by Tyler Clang. I wanted to share this
one with you because it's one of my old favorites

(04:33):
and I went on an entire cheese obsession month after
writing it. It was written for our video series of
brain Stuff, which appeared on YouTube where it was performed
by Jonathan Strickland. If you would like to hear a
little bit more about cheese, I have a whole show
about food that also kind of developed after my cheese
obsession called food Stuff available wherever you find your podcasts.

(04:57):
For more on this and lots of other thoroughly processed topics,
visit our home planet, how Stuff works dot com. M