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[-] prole 3 points 21 hours ago
[-] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 4 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

This is one of my favorite weird ones - people decry it as "plastic cheese" and hold it up as a paragon of american culinary regression based on that assumption. But as it turns out, it's... not that bad?

Easy Cheese is an aged yellow (annatto) cheddar cheese emulsion (of cheese and some amount of milk + oil + water), sold in a disposable charger. It's pretty much just that - the only things that aren't cheese are a couple emulsifying salts (gross fun fact: sodium citrate (one of the salts) is the most common anticoagulant used for the preservation of whole blood - if you've ever had a transfusion, you've had it flowing through your veins!), alginate as a thickener and Apocarotenal (E160e), the only really questionable ingredient. It's purpose, as far as I am aware, is only as a color stabilizer (derived from spinach originally, now usually extracted from citrus pomace!) and it could easily be removed. While approved in pretty much every country for food use, there's been some studies coming out that show that excess amounts can accelerate cell oxidation (which I don't know what means but it sure sounds very scary).

People have been making whipped/blended cheeses by hand for thousands of years, and spray cheese for about as long as whipping siphons have been around (IIRC it originated in France with a "foamed brie" dish that (apocryphally) blew up the kitchen where it was developed due to an improvised and leaky gasometer. I doubt this is true though, as I cannot figure out how they would have pressurized the siphon assembly. Maybe some kind of spray-cheese whoopie cushion?). I personally quite dislike the texture, but I also dislike Nitro coffee/tea because of the overly 'smooth' texture the nitrogen gives it, so I suspect that's an issue exacerbated the autism.

That all said, the 'american' flavor of Easy Cheese is just this side of "dead rats" on the scale of "concerning things to find in someone's fridge" - it's basically flavorless, and although that begrudgingly does make it mostly inoffensive, anyone who willingly obtains it in favor of the cheddar version is probably angling to turn your skin into a charming couch cover...

this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2026
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I'm going to Hell for this

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