Did you know—Or when did you find out that Velveeta isn’t really a cheese?
Growing up, who didn’t have Velveeta cheese in the pantry? It was crucial, the ideal ingredient for quick mac and cheese, and melted perfectly into omelets. But now that you’ve gotten more conscious about your food choices, you have to wonder...what is Velveeta made of, exactly?
According to Kraft, Velveeta “melts smooth and creamy for ultimate appeal.” Translation: it melts better than regular cheese because—shocker—it’s not real cheese. Sure it has elements of cheese, but Velveeta is more like a cheese on (genetically modified) steroids than anything else.
Velveeta cheese was first invented at the beginning of the 20th century, when New York’s Monroe Cheese Company was looking for a solution to a very big problem: broken cheese. Swiss cheese wheels coming out of a Pennsylvania factory were often less than perfect, and this unsellable cheese was losing the company money. The solution, a smooth cheese food product made with leftover cheese bits, was invented by Swiss immigrant Emil Frey, by combining the broken pieces with whey, a byproduct of the cheesemaking process. Thus, Velveeta was born in l923.
While Velveeta used to be made of real cheese, today. Velveeta cheese is made with whey protein concentrate and milk protein—meaning that it is not technically cheese.
The FDA noticed that in 2002, when it sent Kraft a warning letter asking the company to take “cheese spread” off its packaging and replace it with something a bit closer to the truth. While there are elements of real cheese in Velveeta—like, you now, milk—to call it actual cheese is a bit of a stretch. Which is why it is now labeled as a “Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product.” Say that five times fast.
The official list of Velveeta ingredients is as follows: Milk, Water, Whey, Milk Protein Concentrate, Milkfat, Whey Protein Concentrate, Sodium Phosphate, Contains 2% or less of: Salt, Calcium Phosphate, Lactic Acid, Sorbic Acid, Sodium Citrate, Sodium Alginate, Enzymes, Apocarotenal, Annatto, Cheese Culture.
Meanwhile, the ingredient list for most cheeses is milk, rennet, and maybe a little bit of salt. But the longer ingredients list isn’t the most startling element here.
Here’s the thing: you shouldn’t need to add whey to a cheese, because whey is actually produced during traditional cheesemaking (it’s the liquid that’s left after the milk has curdled and been strained).
Velveeta contains quite an array of distinct coloring and preserving agents. Basically it can’t be called real cheese because it has so many additives in it. THE END
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2. Would you rather never be stuck in traffic again or never get another cold?
3. Would you rather live on the beach or in a cabin in the woods?
4. Would you rather be completely invisible for one day or be able to fly for one day?
5. Would you rather travel the world for a year, all expenses paid, or have $40,000 to send on whatever you want?
6. Would you rather spend a year on Mars by yourself or party on a remote island with your friends?
7. Would you rather speak to animals or speak 10 foreign languages?
8. Would you rather lose your passport or smartphone?
9. Would you rather walk barefoot in a public restroom or get poisoned?
10. Would you rather be the hero that saved the girl or the villain that took over the world?
11. Would you rather never play video games again or never use your favorite mobile app again?
12. Would you rather have been an only child or have ten siblings?
13. Would you rather someone read your diary or someone read your text messages?
14. Would you rather have nosy parents or strict parents?
15. Would you rather be popular, but have fake friends or be unpopular, but have real friends?
16. Would you rather sneak out of the house or miss a party that the most popular person in school invited you to?
17. Would you rather climb the highest mountains or swim the deepest seas?
18. Would you rather eat out by yourself or eat at home with your family?
19. Would you rather give up bathing for a month or give up the internet for a month?
20. Would you rather find your true love or find a suitcase with 5 million dollars inside?
SOME LITTLE KNOWN FACTS
1. More people are killed by donkeys annually than are killed in plane crashes.
2. If you keep a Goldfish in the dark room it will eventually turn white.
3. The continents’ names all end with the same letter with which they start.
4. The average human eats 8 spiders in their lifetime at night.
5. A cockroach can live nine days without its head before it starves to death.
6. A polar bear’s skin is black. Its fur is not white, but actually clear.
1. When one door closes and another door opens, you are probably in prison.
2. To me, “drink responsibly” means don’t spill it.
3. Age 60 might be the new 40, but 9 pm is the new mid-night.
4. It’s the start of a brand new day, and I’m off like a heard of turtles.
5. The older I get, the earlier it gets late.
6. When I say, “The other day,” I could be referring to any time between yesterday and 15 years ago.
7. I remember being able to get up without making sound affects.
8. I had my patience tested. I’m negative.
9. Remember if you lose a sock in the dryer, it comes back as a Tupperware lid that doesn’t fit any of your containers.
10. If you’re sitting in public and a stranger takes the seat next to you, just stare straight ahead and say, “Did you bring the money?”
11. When you ask me what I am doing today, and I say “nothing”, it doesn’t mean I am free. It means I am doing nothing.
12. I finally got eight hours of sleep. It took me three days, but whatever.
13. I run like the winded.
MORE FUN
1. I hate when a couple argues in public, and I missed the beginning and don’t know whose side I’m on.
2. When someone asks what I did over the weekend, I squint and ask, “Why, what did you hear?”
3. When you do squats, are your knees supposed to sound like a goat chewing on an aluminum can stuffed with celery?
4. I don’t mean to interrupt people, I just randomly remember things and get really excited.
5. Sometimes someone unexpected comes into your life out of nowhere, makes your heart race, and changes your life forever. We call those people cops.
6. My luck is like a bald guy who just won a comb.
7. Billion dollar idea. A smoke detector that shuts off when you yell, “I’m just cooking!”
8. I’m in a Wal-Mart parking lot watching a woman who can’t remember where she parked. Every time she holds her remote in the air, I honk my horn.
9. My coffee looked at me this norming and told me ”Sorry I don’t do miracles.”
10. The best kind of friends always ask three questions...What can I do? How can I help? What are we drinking?!
11. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. Mark Twain
12. TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters on only one row of the keyboard.
13. The words racecar and kayak are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left.
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