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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: Lauren boke obam Here, I've got something a little bit

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Speaker 1: different for you today, a classic episode of brain Stuff.

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Speaker 1: This is one performed by our prior host, Christian Saga,

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Speaker 1: with the original script written by me. What is what

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Speaker 1: is American cheese really made of? Hey, brain stuff, Christian Sagar? Here?

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Speaker 1: Humans have been making cheese for at least seven thousand years.

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Speaker 1: It is, after all, an efficient and tasty way to

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Speaker 1: preserve nutritious milk beyond its normal lifespan. But cheese can

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Speaker 1: be expensive, inconsistent from batch to batch in some varieties

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Speaker 1: don't last a whole lot longer than milk, and have

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Speaker 1: you ever tried cooking with it? Let's say you want

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Speaker 1: to make nacho dip. Everybody wants to make nacho dip.

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Speaker 1: But when you heat regular cheese, the fats can melt

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Speaker 1: away from the rest of the cheese solids, leaving you

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Speaker 1: with a pool of oil and a lumpy, stringy mess.

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Speaker 1: Enter processed cheese, of which American cheese is a particular type.

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Speaker 1: This stuff is consistent by design, has a longer shelf life,

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Speaker 1: and is usually cheaper than natural cheese. While melting like

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Speaker 1: a dream. But how what arcane science imbued natural cheese

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Speaker 1: with such unnatural properties. Well, here in the United States,

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Speaker 1: the f d A is crafted an exhaustively specific legal

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Speaker 1: definition of processed cheese. The short version is that it's

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Speaker 1: a type of food made by pulverizing, heating, and mixing

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Speaker 1: actual cheese of one or more types with an emulsifier

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Speaker 1: into a homogeneous plastic mass. That's plastic as in the

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Speaker 1: physical definition, i e. A substance easily shaped or molded.

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Speaker 1: Processed cheese isn't actually made of plastic, but it can

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Speaker 1: contain water, salt, artificial color, flat rings in a very

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Speaker 1: long list of chemicals that would bore you to tears

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Speaker 1: on a podcast. The key to process cheese smoothness is

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Speaker 1: the emulsifying agents. And emulsion is a mixture of two

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Speaker 1: liquids that don't usually mix, like oil and water. No

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Speaker 1: matter how hard you stir or shake them together, they'll

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Speaker 1: separate back out. But emulsifiers make the two play nice

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Speaker 1: chemically speaking. That's because they interact with both liquids, grabbing

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Speaker 1: globules of one and suspending them evenly throughout the other.

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Speaker 1: Cheese and milk, for that matter, is made up of

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Speaker 1: fats and fat soluble substances, plus a solution of water

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Speaker 1: soluble proteins and minerals. The added emulsifiers keep them blended

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Speaker 1: together even when they're heated. The other optional ingredients are

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Speaker 1: texture and flavor enhancers, preservatives, and cheese making shortcuts designed

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Speaker 1: to speed the manufacturing process along. It's science cheese, everybody,

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Speaker 1: But as long as the finished cheese has moisture, fat,

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Speaker 1: and pH levels that closely resemble those of its actual

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Speaker 1: cheese ingredients, the stuff can legally be called quote pasteurized

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Speaker 1: processed cheese, and if it's made from cheddar, washed curd,

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Speaker 1: colby or granular cheese, it can be called American cheese.

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Speaker 1: But you may have noticed some extra words creeping in

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Speaker 1: on labels, dubbing the stuff pasteurized processed cheese, food, or

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Speaker 1: spread or product. Those designations indicate that other ingredients have

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Speaker 1: been put in that reduce the amount of actual cheese

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Speaker 1: in the finished food. Cheese food can contain additional milk,

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Speaker 1: skim milk, buttermilk and cheese whey. These lower the cost

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Speaker 1: and increase the meltiness. And that's not a real word,

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Speaker 1: but cheese food must have moisture, fat and pH levels

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Speaker 1: that are close to natural cheese and cheese product can

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Speaker 1: throw those rules right out the window, and cheese spread

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Speaker 1: may have added moisture sweeteners, starches, and moisture binding gums

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Speaker 1: or hydrochloids to optimize spread ability. All of these creations

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Speaker 1: are required to consist of at least cheese. Today's episode

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Speaker 1: was produced by Tyler Clang. I wanted to share this

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Speaker 1: one with you because it's one of my old favorites

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Speaker 1: and I went on an entire cheese obsession month after

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Speaker 1: writing it. It was written for our video series of

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Speaker 1: brain Stuff, which appeared on YouTube where it was performed

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Speaker 1: by Jonathan Strickland. If you would like to hear a

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Speaker 1: little bit more about cheese, I have a whole show

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Speaker 1: about food that also kind of developed after my cheese

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Speaker 1: obsession called food Stuff available wherever you find your podcasts.

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Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other thoroughly processed topics,

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Speaker 1: visit our home planet, how Stuff works dot com. M