Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works, Hey, brain stuff,
Speaker 1: Christian saga. Here. Humans have been making cheese for at
Speaker 1: least seven thousand years. It is, after all, an efficient
Speaker 1: and tasty way to preserve nutritious milk beyond its normal lifespan.
Speaker 1: But cheese can be expensive, inconsistent from batch to batch
Speaker 1: in some varieties don't last a whole lot longer than milk.
Speaker 1: And have you ever tried cooking with it? Let's say
Speaker 1: you want to make nacho dip. Everybody wants to make
Speaker 1: nacho dip. But when you heat regular cheese, the fats
Speaker 1: can melt away from the rest of the cheese solids,
Speaker 1: leaving you with a pool of oil and a lumpy,
Speaker 1: stringy mess. Enter processed cheese, of which American cheese is
Speaker 1: a particular type. This stuff is consistent by design, has
Speaker 1: a longer shelf life, and is usually cheaper than natural cheese,
Speaker 1: while melting like a dream. But how what arcane science
Speaker 1: imbued natural cheese with such unnatural properties? Well? Here in
Speaker 1: the United States, the f d A is crafted an
Speaker 1: exhaustively specific legal definition of processed cheese. The short version
Speaker 1: is that it's a type of food made by pulverizing, heating,
Speaker 1: and mixing actual cheese of one or more types with
Speaker 1: an emulsifier into a homogeneous plastic mass. That's plastic as
Speaker 1: in the physical definition, i e. A substance easily shaped
Speaker 1: or molded. Processed cheese isn't actually made of plastic, but
Speaker 1: it can contain water, salt, artificial color flavorings, and a
Speaker 1: very long list of chemicals that would bore you to
Speaker 1: tears on a podcast. The key to processed cheese smoothness
Speaker 1: is the emulsifying agents, and emultion is a mixture of
Speaker 1: two liquids that don't usually mix, like oil and water.
Speaker 1: No matter how hard you stir or shake them together,
Speaker 1: they'll separate back out, but emulsifiers make the two plain
Speaker 1: nice chemically speaking. That's because they interact with both liquids,
Speaker 1: grabbing globules of one and suspending them evenly throughout the other.
Speaker 1: Cheese and milk, for that matter, is made up of
Speaker 1: fats and fat soluble substances, plus a solution of water
Speaker 1: soluble proteins and minerals. The added emulsifiers keep them blended
Speaker 1: together even when they're heated. The other optional ingredients are
Speaker 1: texture and flavor enhancers. Preservatives and cheese making shortcuts designed
Speaker 1: to speed the manufacturing process along. It's science cheese, everybody.
Speaker 1: But as long as the finished cheese has moisture, fat,
Speaker 1: and pH levels that closely resemble those of its actual
Speaker 1: cheese ingredients, the stuff can legally be called quote pasteurized
Speaker 1: processed cheese, and if it's made from cheddar, washed curd,
Speaker 1: colby or granular cheese, it can be called American cheese.
Speaker 1: But you may have noticed some extra words creeping in
Speaker 1: on labels, dubbing the stuff pasteurized processed cheese, food or
Speaker 1: spread or product. Those designations indicate that other ingredients have
Speaker 1: been put in that reduce the amount of actual cheese
Speaker 1: in the finished food. Cheese food can contain additional milk,
Speaker 1: skim milk, buttermilk and cheese whey. These lower the cost
Speaker 1: and increase the meltiness. And that's not a real word,
Speaker 1: but cheese food must have moisture, fat and pH levels
Speaker 1: that are close to natural cheese and cheese product can
Speaker 1: throw those rules right out the window, and cheese spread
Speaker 1: may have added moisture sweeteners, starches, and moisture binding gums
Speaker 1: or hydrocholoids to optimize spread ability. All of these creations
Speaker 1: are required to consist of at least cheese. Check out
Speaker 1: the brainstuff channel on YouTube, and for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.