Despicable Cheese Food

This post is long overdue. Most people who know me well are familiar with my aversion to American Cheese Singles. For the rest of you, I write in the hopes of dissuading you from further American cheese consumption.

The package reads CHEESE FOOD, not CHEESE, because it isn't really cheese--it's cheese-like (or cheese-ish). Like I said to a lady at work last week, cheese is to cheese food as dog is to dog food. Makes you wonder right there, doesn't it? Would cheese even eat this stuff? My ladyfriend said that her reluctance to eat American cheese is that it is nearly the same consistency as the plastic that wraps it. Therefore, I ask, where does the cheese end and the plastic begin? It's damp, clingy, tears easily, resembles a sort of flexible plaster. It is an unnatural yellow. I find it fascinating that it may not be legally sold as cheese, but as a cheese product.

People here in the States melt it, fling it on burgers, eat it plain from the plastic wrap. They might, given a little prodding, use it as poster adhesive or a devil-be-damned bandaid. I have bought it for guest children, the kind of kids who only eat chicken nuggets from the frozen foods section, and once the children went home, got rid of this cheese imposter, and flung it into the deep well of the outdoor trash, where it could rest in peace.

Somehow, this stuff is worse on eggs than on meats--not sure why that is--and I have more than once staunchly returned burgers and breakfast biscuits with the complaint that I absolutely specified no cheese, and yet here it was, an insulting yellow on what was already an artificially and overly-manipulated protein product. Enough is enough, I say. With so many fabulous cheeses out there, why do we persist with this one?

My kids have inherited my distaste for American cheese, which we have all extended to another amazingly artificial American food product, Cheese Whiz. Can't eat that either, but I have to credit it for its appearance in my favorite line from Loser, a song by Beck: Get crazy with the Cheese Whiz! Apparently Beck also has the 411 on this cheese--as getting crazy with it would be all that you could do.