Speaker 1: Guess what mango? What's that? Well, now you're a Wallace
Speaker 1: and Grammt fan, right, definitely, I love Wallas and Gramut.
Speaker 1: Well I've got a fact. You may not know about them,
Speaker 1: but did you know they actually helped save a cheese No,
Speaker 1: how's that. It was in the early nineties and these
Speaker 1: cheesemakers behind Wensleydale Cheeses, they were struggling and according to
Speaker 1: the Yorkshire Post, things were so bad at the creamery
Speaker 1: that the company was actually considering closing up shop. And
Speaker 1: then this little phenomenon called Wallace and Grommt came along.
Speaker 1: So for you listeners who don't know, and the animations
Speaker 1: the crackpot inventor Wallace loves cheese and especially Wensleydale, and
Speaker 1: the animators chose it because it sounds charming and British
Speaker 1: and yeah, I've kind of made for a good punch line.
Speaker 1: But it was just a coincidence. Actually, they were unaware
Speaker 1: of the hardships the Little Cheese company was going through,
Speaker 1: but the short films actually caused sales to jump by
Speaker 1: twenty three and before long this little forgotten cheese was
Speaker 1: getting imported in big numbers to the US, Canada and
Speaker 1: Mango France and then just one of the stories we're
Speaker 1: gonna tell you today about cheese. So let's dive in
Speaker 1: a their podcast. Listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Speaker 1: Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
Speaker 1: friend Man Guess and on the other side of the
Speaker 1: soundproof glass tucking into the most lavish cheese straight imaginable,
Speaker 1: that is our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Now, for
Speaker 1: today's show, we're giving cheese it's due by checking out
Speaker 1: the science and history behind everyone's favorite golden curds. We're
Speaker 1: gonna explore some fun origins, peek into what makes rotten
Speaker 1: milk so delicious, and along the way, we'll also take
Speaker 1: a look at the state of American cheese today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but before we get started, we wanted to give a
Speaker 1: quick shout out to our researcher Gabe, who was under
Speaker 1: the weather this week, but it did an amazing job
Speaker 1: working through it to get us some facts and stories
Speaker 1: for today's episode. So gave your real hero and a
Speaker 1: traditional get well creative Stinky cheeses has headed your way. Man, Okabe,
Speaker 1: you are such a hero. But anyway, all right, well
Speaker 1: mego We've got a whole wide world of cheese is
Speaker 1: to dive into. So so where do you want to start? Well,
Speaker 1: I know we were talking before the show about how
Speaker 1: cheese is this universally beloved food, Like kids go crazy
Speaker 1: for mac and cheese. It's uh. I think it's pizza
Speaker 1: rat's favorite type of pizza, and sophisticated adults eat it
Speaker 1: for a course instead of dessert. But actually, speaking of
Speaker 1: mac and cheese, you know, one of the things I
Speaker 1: read this week was that Kraft mac and cheese is
Speaker 1: actually more popular in Canada than anywhere else in the world.
Speaker 1: Did you know this? So Food Republic had this article
Speaker 1: about it and they cite that of the seven million
Speaker 1: boxes sold around the globe every week, Canadians consume one
Speaker 1: point seven million of those. That's incredible. Yeah, Canada eats
Speaker 1: twice as much mac and cheese as we do here
Speaker 1: in the States, and most people referred to it as
Speaker 1: Kraft Dinners or just k D for short. I'm serious,
Speaker 1: Kevin Durant isn't the default k D and Canada Craft
Speaker 1: Dinners are. That's how big it is. You know, it's
Speaker 1: even referred to as the national dish of Canada and
Speaker 1: I had no idea about this before we were doing
Speaker 1: our research this week. That's pretty funny. So I always
Speaker 1: think of craft is such an American thing, and I
Speaker 1: actually wanted to talk about craft cheese in a bit,
Speaker 1: but before we do, did you realize that cheese is
Speaker 1: actually the most shoplifted item in the entire world? You know,
Speaker 1: I feel like it heard about that in Europe, but
Speaker 1: but actually worldwide. I know. So I would have thought
Speaker 1: it was candy or maybe c d s back when
Speaker 1: c ds were a thing. But according to the Center
Speaker 1: for Retailed Research, which is this British organization, cheese is
Speaker 1: the most frequently stolen item in the entire world. And
Speaker 1: this is nuts, but they claim that four percent of
Speaker 1: the world's cheese supply winds up being shoplifted. Four percent. Actually,
Speaker 1: I read in five thirty eight that the US produces
Speaker 1: about a billion pounds of cheese every month, So that
Speaker 1: seems like a lot of stolen cheese. So any idea
Speaker 1: why it's such a tempting target. Well, I think it
Speaker 1: mostly comes down to practical reasons, like it's pretty easy
Speaker 1: to pocket some cheese if you need to. I that
Speaker 1: might be easy, but I don't know. They want to
Speaker 1: like stick some brie in my pockets or anything like that,
Speaker 1: But you're right, it probably wouldn't look suspicious, I guess,
Speaker 1: or just like pour some not to cheese down a
Speaker 1: short pocket, you know. But you know, cheeses are generally
Speaker 1: packaged in tiny serving so it's not like the majority
Speaker 1: of shoplifters are trying to steal these giant wheels of
Speaker 1: cheese or anything. But I think the real appeal is
Speaker 1: the cheese itself. So for anyone who's hungry or desperate,
Speaker 1: cheese is rich in vitamins and protein, and plus it
Speaker 1: can keep for months at a time, and of course
Speaker 1: it tastes delicious, right, But that isn't actually the only
Speaker 1: type of cheese theft I read about. So I was
Speaker 1: reading about this cheese crime earlier this summer at a
Speaker 1: food competition in England, and there were these two enormous
Speaker 1: blocks of cheddar that one first and second place at
Speaker 1: the Yovil Show, which I guess is a big festival
Speaker 1: in Summerset. But then after the judging, some cat burglars
Speaker 1: snuck into the tent and made off with the big cheese.
Speaker 1: And I mean that literally, so like according to an
Speaker 1: article in the Daily Mail. Each cheese was about the
Speaker 1: weight of a bag of cement and the size of
Speaker 1: a traditional bulky TV sets. Oh my god, that is
Speaker 1: some big cheese. Yeah, and apparently the crime was premeditated because,
Speaker 1: like the authorities agreed, quote, the blocks are not the
Speaker 1: sort of thing you can put in a handbag or
Speaker 1: hide up your jumper. But but if the thieves can
Speaker 1: get these stolen goods to like the U s or France,
Speaker 1: they should actually be able to make a few thousand
Speaker 1: dollars for their efforts on the black market or um,
Speaker 1: you know, like just end up with a year's worth
Speaker 1: of the best grilled cheese sandwiches ever. That sounds pretty
Speaker 1: good to me. Yeah, so keep your eyes peeled for
Speaker 1: its especially big cheddar blocks on even I guess well,
Speaker 1: I definitely will. But let's talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: broadly about cheese and how it's actually made. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you saw this number, but did you realize
Speaker 1: there over fourteen hundred different types of cheese out there?
Speaker 1: So that allows for a variety and flavors and textures
Speaker 1: and of course aromas that's really unparalleled by any other food. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's actually this overview of cheeses from the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: called the Cheese Book, and uh, it refers to cheese
Speaker 1: as the wine of foods. And that's partially because the
Speaker 1: fermentation makes it possible to have this like tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of variants, even though cheeses are generally made from the
Speaker 1: same ingredients. And I know you looked into some of
Speaker 1: the early history of cheese. I definitely want to hear
Speaker 1: about that. But before we get into that, can I
Speaker 1: redo this one quote game found because it just made
Speaker 1: me really happy? Sure, So what is it? So it's
Speaker 1: by this American writer Clifton Fatiman, who used to write
Speaker 1: for The New Yorker, and he wrote a cheese may disappoint,
Speaker 1: it may be dull, it may be naive, it may
Speaker 1: be oversophisticated, yet it remains cheese. Milks leap towards immortality.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I've got goose bumps from that. Man said,
Speaker 1: milks leap towards immortality. That's a big quote. I like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it too. But let's talk about cheese's humble beginnings.
Speaker 1: So when you find out in your research, al right,
Speaker 1: so there are a lot of happy accidents in the
Speaker 1: history of the world so of course the discovery of
Speaker 1: penicillin falls into that category. So does the discovery of
Speaker 1: corn flakes and the invention of the slinky, and then
Speaker 1: of course there's cheese. I like the idea that, like
Speaker 1: penicilla and corn flakes, the slinky and cheese can all
Speaker 1: sort of hang out and have this one thing in common.
Speaker 1: So I've read basically the same story in a few places,
Speaker 1: but this is how Wired told it. The whole thing
Speaker 1: began when a herdsman carrying a ruminate stomach brimming with
Speaker 1: milk found that by journeys in he had a bag
Speaker 1: full of curds and way. Now some stories claim this
Speaker 1: guy was an Arabian merchant, but whatever the case, for
Speaker 1: some reason he looked into this bag and it was
Speaker 1: using it to transport this milk, and he wasn't put
Speaker 1: off by the smell. And then he decided to stuff
Speaker 1: that cheese in his mouth. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: why he would do this, but it was either good
Speaker 1: enough or interesting enough that he decided to do it again.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's the most common theory. But in
Speaker 1: terms of things we can point to the first real
Speaker 1: evidence of cheesemaking that we have is from like seventy
Speaker 1: years ago, and it was from an old pot in Poland,
Speaker 1: and the researchers at the University of Bristol found a
Speaker 1: vessel that looks like it was used to make cheeses.
Speaker 1: Apparently the inners of the thing look very much like
Speaker 1: a modern cheese trainer, and after analyzing the nooks and
Speaker 1: the crevices of the thing that the scientists realized they
Speaker 1: were right. They found fatty acids still stuck in the container,
Speaker 1: which proved it had been used to separate the way
Speaker 1: from the Kurds in order to make cheese. So I'm
Speaker 1: always amazed by this sort of like historical detective work.
Speaker 1: So I don't even understand, like, how do you know
Speaker 1: to look for fatty acids because something kind of looks
Speaker 1: like a cheese trainer. It's amazing. So do you know
Speaker 1: anything about why are Polish forefathers, I mean your Polish
Speaker 1: forefathers and my Polish forefathers father to make cheese? Like
Speaker 1: it feels like such a laborious effort when you've already
Speaker 1: got meat and milk at the ready. Well, if you
Speaker 1: think about it, a lot of it comes down to convenience.
Speaker 1: So then transporting you know, cheese is a lot easier
Speaker 1: and its stores pretty well, and eating it meant you
Speaker 1: could settle down and sustain yourself without having to kill
Speaker 1: livestock for food. And the truth is the process hasn't
Speaker 1: changed all that much in years. I mean, the basic
Speaker 1: elements are still pretty much all the same. You let
Speaker 1: fresh milk ferment with bacteria that can be wild or cultured,
Speaker 1: and when there's enough facidity in your spoiled milk, you
Speaker 1: had these enzymes to make it coagulate. So in that
Speaker 1: Origin of Cheese story I was telling, these enzymes would
Speaker 1: have come from the lining of the stomach bag that
Speaker 1: was being used to transport this milk. And it's called rennet,
Speaker 1: but it can be made in a lab now. And
Speaker 1: then you cut, stir and heat the product to remove
Speaker 1: the fluid or the way. And finally you take the curds,
Speaker 1: you put them in the mold with salt and press
Speaker 1: them to get out all that extra liquid, and then
Speaker 1: you let it mature until it blooms into a delicious
Speaker 1: cheese that everybody wants to shoplift, I guess. But yeah,
Speaker 1: here's what's interesting. You remember those four hundred types of
Speaker 1: cheese I mentioned earlier well. According to food scientists Paul
Speaker 1: Kinstead at the University of Vermont, the reason there's so
Speaker 1: many distinct types of cheese is because there are so
Speaker 1: many pre industrial communities that all needed a way to
Speaker 1: preserve milk, so they all figured out their own cheese recipes.
Speaker 1: You know, these different solutions for making cheese given their
Speaker 1: regions distinct climate or milk types or all sorts of
Speaker 1: other conditions there. That's really fascinating. And you know, you
Speaker 1: always hear that term tarawa associated with wine, like all
Speaker 1: the elements of a region's terrain and these unquantifiable conditions
Speaker 1: that give a wine it's unique flavor, and you can
Speaker 1: see why that word gets applied to cheese as well.
Speaker 1: Speaking of tarawa, I was reading this BBC article on
Speaker 1: this cheese called baster Boten Soast. I'm obviously reading that
Speaker 1: off my notes because there's no way I could remember that.
Speaker 1: But this cheese is super famous in Sweden. It's like
Speaker 1: this hard yellow cheese with tiny holes, and according to
Speaker 1: the BBC article, it's served everywhere. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: royal weddings, that the Nobel Prize dinner the at that
Speaker 1: restaurant Noma it's like the most famous rest armor whatever,
Speaker 1: and there's even been poetry written about it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like that's the ultimate compliment for cheese, is
Speaker 1: when a poem gets written about it and the Prince
Speaker 1: of Jordan claims it's what he loves about Sweden most.
Speaker 1: But the craziest thing about this cheese isn't that it's
Speaker 1: in such high demand, but that no one can replicate
Speaker 1: the cheese and other regions, and not even the dairy
Speaker 1: that produces it itself. So apparently some years ago they
Speaker 1: tried to expand their operation to a nearby city, but
Speaker 1: none of the cheese they made there came out the same.
Speaker 1: Like they commissioned this elaborate research to figure out why
Speaker 1: they did all these like big chemical analyzes on the cheese,
Speaker 1: but their scientists just couldn't figure it out. And they're
Speaker 1: all these theories, right, Like some people think there's this
Speaker 1: distinct micro flora in the building and and boor cross
Speaker 1: where the building where the cheese is aged and that
Speaker 1: supposedly gives it a distinct layer of flavor. Or there
Speaker 1: are these old spruce shelves and people think like that
Speaker 1: the cheese is aged on that is contributing to the
Speaker 1: flavor or um. Some people think the cows in the
Speaker 1: usun get more sunlight and that affects their milk. Like
Speaker 1: they're all these theories in fact, like like one of
Speaker 1: the more far out ones is that, like there was
Speaker 1: a meteorite that hit the lake in town, and people
Speaker 1: think that affected the region's soil, So the soil is
Speaker 1: what's contributing. Anyway, There are a lot of ideas, but
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, no one's been able to replicate the
Speaker 1: cheese's distinct flavor anywhere else. That really is fascinating. All right, well,
Speaker 1: why don't we pick this up with the origin of
Speaker 1: a cheese that's very replicable and that's American cheese. But
Speaker 1: let's do that right after a break. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: part time Genius. All right, Mango, before the break, I
Speaker 1: think you said something about how poetry about cheese might
Speaker 1: be the ultimate compliment you can give a cheese. I
Speaker 1: really I'm going to have to disagree with you on this,
Speaker 1: So I'm curious where you're going with this, because I
Speaker 1: think the highest compliment might be when the Virgin Mary's
Speaker 1: face shows up on the side of your grilled cheese sandwich.
Speaker 1: You know, just to let you know you've got a
Speaker 1: superior cheese on your hands. You know, I remember that
Speaker 1: Jesus cheeto, like the one that looked like Jesus on
Speaker 1: the cross, And I know there was a Jesus image
Speaker 1: that someone found on a marmite lid in Australia, But
Speaker 1: I don't really remember the grilled cheese Madonna you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Oh man, the story was pretty incredible and I remember
Speaker 1: it from the news as a kid. But it was
Speaker 1: in this Florida woman made herself a grilled cheese. She
Speaker 1: then cut it in half, took a bite, and then
Speaker 1: stopped because she saw the Mother Mary staring back at
Speaker 1: her right there in her toast. I mean, this must
Speaker 1: have been an amazing experience. And then for some reason
Speaker 1: she decided to box the thing that this half sandwich,
Speaker 1: and and she put some cotton balls around it, and
Speaker 1: she kept it on her nightstand as a good luck charm.
Speaker 1: And she claims the blessed grilled cheese helped her win
Speaker 1: seventy thousand dollars in a casino, among other things. And
Speaker 1: in that time it never actually sprouted mold, and that
Speaker 1: just increased her faith. And it's hours you know. But
Speaker 1: then in two thousand four, she decided to sell it
Speaker 1: on eBay, and the auction side initially took the listing
Speaker 1: down because I thought it was a hoax, but then
Speaker 1: they allowed it to go back up, and the Miracle
Speaker 1: on Toast sold for twenty eight thousand dollars to Golden
Speaker 1: Palace dot Com, which is this online casino. So between
Speaker 1: her like seventy thousand and winning and this twenty thousand
Speaker 1: from this other casino, she basically, like milt a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars out of casinos. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So was it really a ten year old sandwich? Like,
Speaker 1: how come I didn't have any mold on it? Well,
Speaker 1: Brendan Corner at Slate actually did this analysis on and
Speaker 1: talked about all the factors that could have been contributing
Speaker 1: to this. So the wonder bread would have had plenty
Speaker 1: of preservatives. I know, you might like wonder bread, but
Speaker 1: you might not be surprised to know there are a
Speaker 1: few preservatives in there. And the margine that was slathered
Speaker 1: on it would also protect the bread with its trans fats.
Speaker 1: And you know, the cook cheese itself could have changed
Speaker 1: the pH which would have slowed the molds growth as well.
Speaker 1: But that said, Corner did think it was pretty special
Speaker 1: that there was no mold at all on this sandwich.
Speaker 1: I mean that that is unbelievable. But there's a bigger
Speaker 1: shock to this mego, and that was that a copycat
Speaker 1: sandwich with Hello Kitty's face, and you think that'd be
Speaker 1: a big deal. It only had a high bit on
Speaker 1: it of eighties cents, So sad well, I like that.
Speaker 1: No one saying top dollar for a miracle kitty sandwich. Actually, also,
Speaker 1: just for the record, when she sold the grilled cheese,
Speaker 1: the Florida woman insisted that whoever the next buyer was
Speaker 1: not devour the Mother Mary sandwich, and the casino not
Speaker 1: surprisingly agreed to this. I mean, it's a ten year
Speaker 1: old sandwich. But speaking of special cheeses, I know you
Speaker 1: looked into the history of American cheese, so why don't
Speaker 1: you take a minute just to give us a quick
Speaker 1: rundown of it. So America rallied around making cheddar pretty early,
Speaker 1: and Cheddar was this incredibly hearty cheese. It weathered the
Speaker 1: temperatures and humidity really well on like some of the
Speaker 1: other European cheeses. But it still tasted great, and by
Speaker 1: the seventeen nineties, the US was exporting cheese to England
Speaker 1: as quote Yankee cheese. It was also called American cheese
Speaker 1: back then too, and the upper classes in England looked
Speaker 1: down on this stuff, partially because it came from America,
Speaker 1: but also because they didn't think it stood up to
Speaker 1: the traditional English cheddars. And the quality really varied from
Speaker 1: cheese to cheese. But it's sold to the lower classes
Speaker 1: in England because it's so cheap, and America sort of
Speaker 1: rallied around this cheddar cheese. So I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've gone to Upstate New York. Is my mother in
Speaker 1: law's from Upstate New York. But um, they're all these
Speaker 1: stores there that sells store cheese in the windows. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I I never heard that term before. But the
Speaker 1: first time I saw it, I was so confused, like,
Speaker 1: what's store cheese? But that's just the term for local cheddar.
Speaker 1: And it's almost like a house wine. But Upstate New
Speaker 1: York's love affair with cheese really took off in the
Speaker 1: eighteen fifties and eighteen fifty one in particular. That's when
Speaker 1: this gentleman named Jesse Williams started a cheese revolution by
Speaker 1: starting the first big cheese factory in upstate New York.
Speaker 1: Like his son wasn't a very good cheesemaker, apparently, and
Speaker 1: he decided to help him out by buying look from
Speaker 1: the surrounding areas, and together they made this more consistently
Speaker 1: quality cheese. And according to David Clark, who was our
Speaker 1: you might remember who was our cheese historian at Mental Floss,
Speaker 1: the factories just took off in the region from there,
Speaker 1: and by the eighteen seventies, the US was sending over
Speaker 1: three hundred million pounds of cheese back to England every year.
Speaker 1: So Cheddar sort of became the default cheese. That's really interesting,
Speaker 1: and I like that we claim we had a cheese
Speaker 1: historian at Mental Flaws. That's pretty great. He was awesome, though.
Speaker 1: So I do want to touch on things like Monterey
Speaker 1: Jack and other American cheeses, But how do we get
Speaker 1: from Cheddar to craft singles? Like? Is there actually a
Speaker 1: thread there? Yeah? Definitely. So one of the things I
Speaker 1: was stunned by was how early James Kraft was in
Speaker 1: the business. And actually Canada kind of comes to their
Speaker 1: love of craft honestly because he was a Canadian who
Speaker 1: moved to the States and saw this opportunity in whole
Speaker 1: selling cheese. I guess he was trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to reduce waste, because at first he was just
Speaker 1: trying to cram cheese into jars and then into cans apparently,
Speaker 1: which just seems so gross. But then in uh in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen, he stumbled into this genius idea and here
Speaker 1: I'm quoting Clark again. By shredding refuse cheese, repasteurizing it,
Speaker 1: and mixing in some sodium phosphate, Kraft produced the strange
Speaker 1: wonder we now know as American processed cheese, and apparently
Speaker 1: it was this huge success from the start, right, Like
Speaker 1: Kraft was this true American salesman. He marketed his cheese,
Speaker 1: which was obviously made from scrap cheese, as this superior
Speaker 1: product because it was more consistent. And by the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: over the cheese consumed in America was craft, which is crazy, right,
Speaker 1: So naturally this processed cheese had this much longer shelf
Speaker 1: life than anything that was natural, and when he got
Speaker 1: into supplying cheese for the troops, his business really took off.
Speaker 1: Of course, later cheese manufacturer's lobby to have Crafts product
Speaker 1: called a cheese product instead of a natural cheese. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, because you know, anything with less than I
Speaker 1: think it's fifty one cheese and it can't legally be
Speaker 1: called cheese, which which to me seems pretty fair if
Speaker 1: it's less than that. But you know, whatever, I hear
Speaker 1: the phrase cheese product, I always think of cheese whiz
Speaker 1: and how you told me that story about when the
Speaker 1: inventor of cheese was tried a jar of it. Decades later,
Speaker 1: he actually called up the hotline for the company because
Speaker 1: it tasted so terrible. Yeah, they changed the formula to
Speaker 1: not use any cheese, and he called up the hotline
Speaker 1: to tell him it tasted like axle grease, like his
Speaker 1: exact words. But back to the graft single. So that
Speaker 1: was James's brother, Norman's invention. Norman Craft and he knew
Speaker 1: that sliced cheese from the store was pretty inconsistent, like
Speaker 1: it came in all sorts of sizes and thickness. So
Speaker 1: in he started playing with ways to make a more
Speaker 1: convenient cheese and this was going to be a godsend
Speaker 1: to people, but it actually took him fifteen years to
Speaker 1: do it, but the way he did is kind of cool,
Speaker 1: Like he had these ribbons of cheese like hot cheese
Speaker 1: that would get poured and then cut by a machine
Speaker 1: and packaged in a block of eight peelable slices. It
Speaker 1: was a huge improvement, and the press actually raved about it.
Speaker 1: They called him Mom Deluxe Process slices. And according to
Speaker 1: the New York Times, cheese slices used to curl and
Speaker 1: dry out and this solved those problems. So sales of
Speaker 1: Craft just skyrocketed after the innovation, all thanks to Norman.
Speaker 1: That just sounds like the name of the guy that
Speaker 1: should have invented Craft cheese, or should have invented this
Speaker 1: process cheese. But so so when did they actually start
Speaker 1: coming individually wrapped? Yeah, so I looked at that too,
Speaker 1: and that wasn't until nine when this other inventor, I
Speaker 1: think he's in Indiana. He wasn't working for Craft, but
Speaker 1: he solved the problem of these sliced cheese blocks sticking together,
Speaker 1: and Craft saw the genius of the idea and came
Speaker 1: up with their own tweak on the process. So Bonap
Speaker 1: did this article glorifying the Craft single and as they
Speaker 1: put it, quote American cheese is the greatest cheese known
Speaker 1: to man, even if it really isn't cheese at all.
Speaker 1: Oh ouch. So, actually, we always had craft singles in
Speaker 1: my house growing up, and partially it was because we
Speaker 1: use them for grilled cheese, like they were there for
Speaker 1: me and my sister to toast our own as a snack,
Speaker 1: but increasingly we only kept them in the house around
Speaker 1: for my dog. Your dog, Yeah, she was like really
Speaker 1: greedy and she'd fly out the door and just stay
Speaker 1: a little out of range, and as a pup, we'd
Speaker 1: like chase her around until we caught her, Like our
Speaker 1: whole family would be out there trying to tackle her
Speaker 1: because she so widely. But then I think my mom
Speaker 1: realized that she loved American cheese. So as my dog
Speaker 1: ruled her, you'd call my dog's name and she just
Speaker 1: kind of ignore you. But then when you yelled the
Speaker 1: word cheese and then you prove it. But with the
Speaker 1: sounds like the plastic just peeling off that craft single,
Speaker 1: then she'd suddenly come bounding back. I like that she
Speaker 1: needed the two pieces of proof there. That's pretty crazy. Well,
Speaker 1: like all my neighbors knew it, like they knew when
Speaker 1: we had like waving this craft single. They're like, what
Speaker 1: was going on? That's pretty great. Well, craft obviously has
Speaker 1: a big part in American nostalgia, and you know, there's
Speaker 1: been this huge swing back from manufactured foods to the
Speaker 1: super artisanal stuff. And there was an article in Scientific
Speaker 1: American last year that said there are over four hundred
Speaker 1: craft cheesemakers in the US now, which is I think
Speaker 1: it's like double what it was just fifteen sixteen years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure it's a similar trend for like reason
Speaker 1: artisanal pickle makers or whatever, pickle makers. Yeah. But what
Speaker 1: struck me about the Scientific American article was that it
Speaker 1: made this interesting point about how the American tarawa versus
Speaker 1: the European concept of it. And let me quote this
Speaker 1: article by the writer Leila Epplett. She says other European
Speaker 1: counterparts have an invention of tradition. Americans have what cultural
Speaker 1: anthropologists than m I T. Professor Heather Packson calls a
Speaker 1: tradition of invention. You see, I flipped that thing. There's
Speaker 1: a little different, but it emphasizes this innovation and prioritizes
Speaker 1: change over continuity. So in France, the flavor of terrain
Speaker 1: described how the region and the people and the cultural
Speaker 1: tradition were all involved, and also like the technique, they
Speaker 1: all contribute to the taste of the cheese. But in
Speaker 1: the United States, tear wise given this kind of more
Speaker 1: of an entrepreneurial and maybe an individualist twist, and and
Speaker 1: that helps to designate the taste of a particular farm
Speaker 1: and its products rather than you know, sort of that
Speaker 1: the taste of the cultural or the geographic region that
Speaker 1: you might see from the European cheeses. And that's actually
Speaker 1: pretty interesting, uh, And I guess it makes sense because
Speaker 1: the US always has like this more individual spin on things,
Speaker 1: and it makes sense for cheese as well. But I
Speaker 1: actually remember reading this article in an anthropology class in
Speaker 1: college about baseball and how unusual it is in sports
Speaker 1: for one person to face off against an entire team
Speaker 1: and you know that that's what every batter does one
Speaker 1: by one, right, but also how that's part of what
Speaker 1: makes it such an American game, like this mythic belief
Speaker 1: in the individual. And I don't know if it's a
Speaker 1: great argument, but I actually never thought about it that way.
Speaker 1: But we should probably do another episode on cheese at
Speaker 1: some point, because there's so much we won't get to
Speaker 1: cover in this episode. And because as I've said many times,
Speaker 1: I could live on cheese. I love cheese so much.
Speaker 1: But I do want to cover some cheese super relatives
Speaker 1: because I love cheese so much. So how about we
Speaker 1: tackle that after a quick break. That's great, Okay, man,
Speaker 1: go today. We've got Christine Haney on the line now.
Speaker 1: Christine is an old friend of ours from her previous
Speaker 1: life at the New York Times. She's a wonderful reporter
Speaker 1: and she's got a terrific news show on Netflix called
Speaker 1: Rot and it's all about food crimes. Welcome to the program, Christine.
Speaker 1: Thank you, it's great to be here. So tell us
Speaker 1: you're doing this show for Anthony Bourdain's production company, and
Speaker 1: it looks really beautiful. So I have to ask, why
Speaker 1: did you choose to focus on food crimes? When I
Speaker 1: was at the Times, they had a conversation with some
Speaker 1: of the heads of Zero Points Are Productions, and one
Speaker 1: thing I found was that it was on maternity leave
Speaker 1: and I was watching bourdain show and just thought, as
Speaker 1: you said, it was a beautiful program, and I thought, like,
Speaker 1: why am I watching this? I haven't slept in months,
Speaker 1: there's something here really compelling, And so it actually just
Speaker 1: grew out of a conversation with VPD about the fact
Speaker 1: that I had covered a lot of crime. I've sent
Speaker 1: you people to prison with my reporting and how that
Speaker 1: intersects with food. And they've done a lot of wonderful
Speaker 1: food shows like Mind of a Chef, Parts Unknown, and
Speaker 1: they've also done some crime shows like The Hunt with
Speaker 1: John Walsh, and I just said, why don't you marry
Speaker 1: the two? So they hired me to start looking into
Speaker 1: this area. And then when you start looking into food
Speaker 1: crimes and what has now become rotten, you see that
Speaker 1: food fraud is just so rich with stories. And sorry
Speaker 1: to say, but if you're a criminal, this is the
Speaker 1: place to go. Anyone, any you know, job leads here.
Speaker 1: But because it's incredibly underregulated and you can make a
Speaker 1: lot of money, you can commit a lot of crime
Speaker 1: and you won't serve as much time. Well, I love
Speaker 1: that you're giving criminals advice on our show, and we
Speaker 1: in that sky with criminals, so that's great. But I
Speaker 1: just watched the show on Garlic and it really is
Speaker 1: beautifully shy. It's fascinating, and and it was called Garlic breath,
Speaker 1: which I was just lighted by. But one of the
Speaker 1: things I thought was just so crazy was that you've
Speaker 1: got those clips of how garlic wasn't super popular before
Speaker 1: I think it's the sixties or seventies, and then they're
Speaker 1: all these commercials trying to introduce it to the public.
Speaker 1: Like that footage was hilarious and and obviously the documentary
Speaker 1: is super serious, but how did you learn that story?
Speaker 1: We talked about how did you grow up with as
Speaker 1: much garlic? And then it really got into these free
Speaker 1: ranging conversations with my colleagues and CPZ about when you
Speaker 1: start eating more garlic? Were you influenced by Um Emerald?
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember watching Emeral logos when I was
Speaker 1: a federal courts reporter in Alabama covering death row cases,
Speaker 1: and he was just comfort So I always think of
Speaker 1: him with him saying like Garla, garlic, garlic, and so um.
Speaker 1: That's where we kind of picked up on that history
Speaker 1: of how it's really taken off and it's integrated into
Speaker 1: everything that we eat now. But then it's married to
Speaker 1: this crazy crime that a lot of garlic in the
Speaker 1: US comes by way of Chinese prisons. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: just astounding to me, and can you tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about how you discovered that story and how
Speaker 1: you managed to get that footage. So basically, I carried
Speaker 1: the sixty seven page lawsuit everywhere I went and just
Speaker 1: kept reading it over and over. And you see in
Speaker 1: the episode there are all these people who have been
Speaker 1: sued in a rico case, like a racketeering case against
Speaker 1: this garlic company out in California, Harmony, which has offices
Speaker 1: in China and California. And I just really started digging
Speaker 1: in and reaching out to the different players who had
Speaker 1: been sued Um, and one of them was this wonderful
Speaker 1: and then they makes use you who is from China,
Speaker 1: grew up in the Shandong province, came to New York
Speaker 1: to be a professor, lost his professorship after UM funding
Speaker 1: went away. Um during made off and then Um went
Speaker 1: back into the garlic business and realized when he was
Speaker 1: home in a family vacation that the local housewives were
Speaker 1: complaining to him about how his their work had been
Speaker 1: taken there like at home work had been taken by
Speaker 1: where they used to peel garlic was now being done
Speaker 1: by all the local prisons. So his son, he's this
Speaker 1: great tech guy who went to Columbia, helped him by
Speaker 1: a undercover camera, and he snuck into the prisons, presented
Speaker 1: himself as like an American businessman now and got us
Speaker 1: this incredible footage. And it is extraordinary also because his
Speaker 1: son knows like gadgets so well that the quality of
Speaker 1: the footage we have from inside of prison is his
Speaker 1: I think extraordinary. Yeah, it really is. I'm a little
Speaker 1: bit concerned about about maybe we're not working hard enough
Speaker 1: because we haven't sent anyone to prison with our work
Speaker 1: on Part Time Genius, and we haven't had to sneak
Speaker 1: anyone out of China. We really got to step up
Speaker 1: our game here. But we are talking about cheese, which
Speaker 1: is awesome today, and so we we've talked about some
Speaker 1: funny cheese stuffs in this episode. But Christine, I'm curious,
Speaker 1: are there any cheese related scandals or just weird facts
Speaker 1: that you're obsessed with. First, one thing everyone should know
Speaker 1: is that the way cheese is regulated is if you
Speaker 1: buy a pepperoni pizza, if the pepperoni makes you sick,
Speaker 1: that's regulated by the U. S d A. If the
Speaker 1: cheese makes you sick, it's regulated by the FDA. Well,
Speaker 1: I love that every bite of a slice of pepperoni
Speaker 1: pizza is like a delicious taste of bureaucracy. It is
Speaker 1: absolutely yes. So, Christine, my favorite thing about you as
Speaker 1: a reporter is when you find whimsical stories. And and
Speaker 1: I know I've talked to you about your Bird Talk
Speaker 1: magazine story the at Food, which I loved so much,
Speaker 1: and and you found royalty and taxi cab drivers, and
Speaker 1: you just find great stories. But is there anything delightful
Speaker 1: going on in food or agriculture right now that you're
Speaker 1: kind of fascinated by. I am still three years in
Speaker 1: really enjoying writing about food and agriculture, and I think
Speaker 1: the characters are wonderful. I've been spending a lot of
Speaker 1: time talking to this wonderful turkey farmer who won't eat
Speaker 1: turkey to be so close to with turkeys, so we
Speaker 1: eat pork on Thanksgiving and um, and I basically I'm
Speaker 1: talking to farmers at all hours now, so it's I'm
Speaker 1: getting very attuned to like the habits of livestock and
Speaker 1: how turkeys can be very sensitive. And it's just like
Speaker 1: a very entertaining and fun beats that's really wonderful. Well,
Speaker 1: I hope all of our listeners will check out Rotten
Speaker 1: on Netflix right now. Christine Honey, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: being on Part Time Genius. Thank you. It's great chatting
Speaker 1: with you. Okay, so before we get off American Cheese
Speaker 1: is I do want to tell one last story, and
Speaker 1: that's the Jack and Monterey Jack. So there's actually a
Speaker 1: real jack behind that shoes. Yeah, it was this this scott.
Speaker 1: His name was David Jack, and he came to the
Speaker 1: US in the eighteen forties. He was a contractor and
Speaker 1: he wasn't exactly like the laid back California dude, and
Speaker 1: he made a lot of money and started owning land
Speaker 1: and was supposedly this ruthless landlord, but he ended up
Speaker 1: with shares in a number of local dairy farms. Now,
Speaker 1: the truth is that Franciscan friars in the Monterey area
Speaker 1: had been making this distinctive cheese in the region for
Speaker 1: quite a while. But since he already had the milk,
Speaker 1: David Jack decided to co opt the friar's recipe and
Speaker 1: get into the cheese business for himself. Initially, he called
Speaker 1: the product Jack's Cheese, but then he rebranded it Monterey Jack.
Speaker 1: So I mean, that's pretty cool that like monks have
Speaker 1: given us chantagne and cheese and and they get a
Speaker 1: little credit for it. Yeah, don't forget genetics, maga. I
Speaker 1: meant Mindel and his pea plants and all that. You're
Speaker 1: right though, they don't get credit. So, uh well, why
Speaker 1: don't we do a few superlatives before we get to
Speaker 1: the fact off, what would you have on your side?
Speaker 1: All right? Well, how about the best cheese for when
Speaker 1: you want to spoil yourself? And I'm gonna go with
Speaker 1: with Puel for this, And it's that crumbly cheese from Serbia.
Speaker 1: It's actually donkey cheese. Do you remember when there are
Speaker 1: all those rumors that Djokovic, after going on that insane
Speaker 1: windstreak in tennis, decided to buy up all the donkey
Speaker 1: cheese in Serbia. It was so absurd and it was
Speaker 1: in the headlines for like a long time. I mean,
Speaker 1: you got a dream big when you're somebody like that.
Speaker 1: And maybe it's a smart business strategy to corner that market.
Speaker 1: Because Puel sells for five hundred and seventy six dollars
Speaker 1: a pound. That's insane. So what makes it so expensive? Well,
Speaker 1: apparently it takes about twenty five leaders just to make
Speaker 1: a single kilogram of donkey cheese. Donkey cheese feels like
Speaker 1: it should be a phrase, like the synonym for going bananas.
Speaker 1: Like one second, Hector and I were having a normal
Speaker 1: conversation and then he went all donkey cheese on me.
Speaker 1: I like that, who's Hector? Mango? I know, Hector don't
Speaker 1: want to I'm not sure this phrase is going to
Speaker 1: take off, but all right, what cheese would you like
Speaker 1: to honor? Actually, before I go, I read about this
Speaker 1: moose cheese from Sweden that sells for over four dollars
Speaker 1: a pound, and I think the idea is similar to
Speaker 1: your donkey cheese, except that I think moose might be
Speaker 1: more temperamental, Like if a moose senses any sort of disturbance,
Speaker 1: it'll go dry for a while. So milky one has
Speaker 1: to be done super patiently and in total silence. And
Speaker 1: even then it's not like you're walking away with like
Speaker 1: a bucket of moose milk. The return for those two
Speaker 1: hours of quiet is pretty sparse. But I think the
Speaker 1: cheese is supposed to be like extraordinary. That is pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: But I feel like you're stalling, Mango. I mean, you
Speaker 1: haven't given me your cheese award yet. I know, because
Speaker 1: I'm not really prepared for this. Uh, let me look
Speaker 1: through my notes. So, um, I don't want to say
Speaker 1: something about costume Marza, which is that illegal magot cheese,
Speaker 1: because it's too gross. How about the cheese worth losing
Speaker 1: your head over? And that would be brie. So, according
Speaker 1: to the story, Louis the sixteenth was fleeing from revolutionaries
Speaker 1: in France, but along the way, the monarch decided to
Speaker 1: take a pit stop at a tavern because his tom
Speaker 1: tom was growling. And when he was apprehended before being
Speaker 1: taken to the guillotine, mind you, he was caught with
Speaker 1: this giant plate of brie in front of him, and
Speaker 1: he was just enjoying the cheese in a very leisurely manner,
Speaker 1: which is ridiculous. But I actually find it a little Shakespearean. Wait,
Speaker 1: first of all, did you say tom tom? I just
Speaker 1: wanted to be clear on that. I think that you did.
Speaker 1: But so, so, why why is this? Why is this Shakespearean? Uh?
Speaker 1: Because it's like a big question for her monarch right
Speaker 1: to breathe or not to breathe? Oh gosh, I didn't
Speaker 1: think it could get worse than Tom. Tom, you really
Speaker 1: did say that, And now you've said to bree or
Speaker 1: not to breathe. But all right, well, why don't we
Speaker 1: pretend neither of those things happened, and let's just get
Speaker 1: straight into the fact. Off. All right, here's one for you.
Speaker 1: Did you know that, before lawmakers settled on the term
Speaker 1: process cheese, cheesemakers were lobbying to classify craft cheeses as
Speaker 1: embalmed cheese. Do you know what Richard Nixon's last meal
Speaker 1: as president was? What's that? So? He had a pineapple slices,
Speaker 1: a glass of milk, and a bowl of cottage cheese.
Speaker 1: There's a photo of it online and it's actually so sad.
Speaker 1: But apparently cottage cheese was one of Nixon's favorite snacks,
Speaker 1: and he especially liked to eat it with ketchup. Oh.
Speaker 1: I actually am a fan of cottage cheese, but I
Speaker 1: don't understand. Actually I like all of those things, but
Speaker 1: I don't understand that combat nation. If you've ever eaten
Speaker 1: pineapple and had anything with dairy in it, you know
Speaker 1: along with it, it is disgusting. That is so strange.
Speaker 1: Nixon was a strange man. Well, according to the site
Speaker 1: Addie McDonald's used the clever trick to cut costs back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight. They pulled one of the
Speaker 1: two slices of cheese from their double cheeseburger and renamed
Speaker 1: it the Mick Double. The move saved six cents per
Speaker 1: sandwich and fifteen thousand dollars a year per restaurant. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's gonna add up. Do you know that the phrase
Speaker 1: the big cheese actually comes from Hindi like cheese and
Speaker 1: Hindi and or do actually means thing and the British
Speaker 1: picked up on it when they colonized India. The real
Speaker 1: cheese meant something that was top notch or like the
Speaker 1: real thing, and a big cheese evolved into this like
Speaker 1: important person. Not everyone loved the term, though, so Wired
Speaker 1: reports that by people were using the word cheesy with
Speaker 1: sarcasm and using it to describe something negative, like I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that was that old? Yeah I didn't either.
Speaker 1: All right, Well you I have talked about the giant
Speaker 1: wheel of cheese Andrew Jackson received during his presidency, but
Speaker 1: apparently big wheels used to be a common present in America.
Speaker 1: When Thomas Jefferson was elected, he received the Mammoth of Cheshire.
Speaker 1: It was this twelve hundred pound wheel of cheese and
Speaker 1: it was rolled through towns from Massachusetts, you know, like
Speaker 1: much fanfare along the way, and of course some ridiculed
Speaker 1: along the way as well. The cheese even had a
Speaker 1: Jefferson quote on the rind. It said, rebellion to tyrants
Speaker 1: is obedience to God. And you know that this wasn't
Speaker 1: just in America, like a big wheel of cheese was
Speaker 1: a great way to show someone you cared in England too.
Speaker 1: When Queen Victoria got married, her subjects pooled the milk
Speaker 1: of seven fifty cows to create a thousand pound wheel,
Speaker 1: and the townspeople were so impressed with their feet that
Speaker 1: they asked if they could put it on display and
Speaker 1: delay giving the present to her, which he agreed to.
Speaker 1: But when the exhibition was over and they tried to
Speaker 1: wheel the cheese back her way, the queen declined to
Speaker 1: give it a home. All right, what did you know
Speaker 1: that Philadelphia Cream Cheese isn't actually named for Philly, but
Speaker 1: actually for the ont of Philadelphia, New York. It kind
Speaker 1: of ruins because I was just pictured Ben Franklin. They're
Speaker 1: smearing his toast within the mornings. I know, I always
Speaker 1: had such pride, like I lived near Philly, I thought
Speaker 1: it was from Philly. Um. This is a great one.
Speaker 1: In the eighteen sixties when Brazil was fighting the sea
Speaker 1: battle against Uruguay, Uruguayan ship ran out of ammunition, so
Speaker 1: they used cannonballs made out of stale eat um cheese
Speaker 1: that they had on board. But the weirdest part is
Speaker 1: that it actually worked and they won the sea battle. Ah,
Speaker 1: that is a great story. But actually I've got one
Speaker 1: I've been saving that. I really think it's gonna be
Speaker 1: hard to top. So have you heard about the origin
Speaker 1: of the Packers cheese head hats? So it goes back
Speaker 1: to this guy named Ralph Bruno, and he was reappulstering
Speaker 1: his mom's couch when he realized he had an extra cushion.
Speaker 1: So he decided to get playful with it, and he
Speaker 1: burned some holes into it and painted it yellow. Now,
Speaker 1: his mom banished him from the house because it smelled
Speaker 1: so bad, but he wore it to a Brewers game
Speaker 1: later that night, and somehow the ease head took off
Speaker 1: across Wisconsin sports. That's where it all began. I love that,
Speaker 1: and I also love that like, burnt cheese smells bad,
Speaker 1: but burnt cheese hats also smell bad. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: mean I like that you found the guy behind the
Speaker 1: American cheese trends, So I'm gonna give it to you.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much. I feel like I needed this one.
Speaker 1: This is this is a good one. Well, thank you
Speaker 1: guys all for listening. Now, if we've forgotten any facts
Speaker 1: about cheese that you feel like we need to know,
Speaker 1: feel free to email us part Time Genius at how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. You can also call us on
Speaker 1: our seven fact hotline that's one eight four four pt Genius,
Speaker 1: or hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for listening, Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius
Speaker 1: is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be
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