Is the Kraft Single America's Greatest Invention?

that the company was actually considering closing up shop. And then this little phenomenon called Wallace and Grommt came along. So for you listeners who don't know, and the animations the crackpot inventor Wallace loves cheese and especially Wensleydale, and the animators chose it because it sounds charming and British and yeah, I've kind of made for a good punch line.

But it was just a coincidence. Actually, they were unaware of the hardships the Little Cheese company was going through, but the short films actually caused sales to jump by twenty three and before long this little forgotten cheese was getting imported in big numbers to the US, Canada and Mango France and then just one of the stories we're gonna tell you today about cheese. So let's dive in

a their podcast. Listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend Man Guess and on the other side of the soundproof glass tucking into the most lavish cheese straight imaginable, that is our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Now, for today's show, we're giving cheese it's due by checking out

the science and history behind everyone's favorite golden curds. We're gonna explore some fun origins, peek into what makes rotten milk so delicious, and along the way, we'll also take a look at the state of American cheese today. Yeah, but before we get started, we wanted to give a quick shout out to our researcher Gabe, who was under the weather this week, but it did an amazing job working through it to get us some facts and stories for today's episode. So gave your real hero and a

traditional get well creative Stinky cheeses has headed your way. Man, Okabe, you are such a hero. But anyway, all right, well mego We've got a whole wide world of cheese is to dive into. So so where do you want to start? Well, I know we were talking before the show about how cheese is this universally beloved food, Like kids go crazy for mac and cheese. It's uh. I think it's pizza rat's favorite type of pizza, and sophisticated adults eat it

for a course instead of dessert. But actually, speaking of mac and cheese, you know, one of the things I read this week was that Kraft mac and cheese is actually more popular in Canada than anywhere else in the world. Did you know this? So Food Republic had this article about it and they cite that of the seven million boxes sold around the globe every week, Canadians consume one

point seven million of those. That's incredible. Yeah, Canada eats twice as much mac and cheese as we do here in the States, and most people referred to it as Kraft Dinners or just k D for short. I'm serious, Kevin Durant isn't the default k D and Canada Craft Dinners are. That's how big it is. You know, it's even referred to as the national dish of Canada and I had no idea about this before we were doing

our research this week. That's pretty funny. So I always think of craft is such an American thing, and I actually wanted to talk about craft cheese in a bit, but before we do, did you realize that cheese is actually the most shoplifted item in the entire world? You know, I feel like it heard about that in Europe, but but actually worldwide. I know. So I would have thought it was candy or maybe c d s back when

c ds were a thing. But according to the Center for Retailed Research, which is this British organization, cheese is the most frequently stolen item in the entire world. And this is nuts, but they claim that four percent of the world's cheese supply winds up being shoplifted. Four percent. Actually, I read in five thirty eight that the US produces about a billion pounds of cheese every month, So that seems like a lot of stolen cheese. So any idea

why it's such a tempting target. Well, I think it mostly comes down to practical reasons, like it's pretty easy to pocket some cheese if you need to. I that might be easy, but I don't know. They want to like stick some brie in my pockets or anything like that, But you're right, it probably wouldn't look suspicious, I guess, or just like pour some not to cheese down a

short pocket, you know. But you know, cheeses are generally packaged in tiny serving so it's not like the majority of shoplifters are trying to steal these giant wheels of cheese or anything. But I think the real appeal is the cheese itself. So for anyone who's hungry or desperate, cheese is rich in vitamins and protein, and plus it can keep for months at a time, and of course it tastes delicious, right, But that isn't actually the only

type of cheese theft I read about. So I was reading about this cheese crime earlier this summer at a food competition in England, and there were these two enormous blocks of cheddar that one first and second place at the Yovil Show, which I guess is a big festival in Summerset. But then after the judging, some cat burglars snuck into the tent and made off with the big cheese. And I mean that literally, so like according to an

article in the Daily Mail. Each cheese was about the weight of a bag of cement and the size of a traditional bulky TV sets. Oh my god, that is some big cheese. Yeah, and apparently the crime was premeditated because, like the authorities agreed, quote, the blocks are not the sort of thing you can put in a handbag or

hide up your jumper. But but if the thieves can get these stolen goods to like the U s or France, they should actually be able to make a few thousand dollars for their efforts on the black market or um, you know, like just end up with a year's worth of the best grilled cheese sandwiches ever. That sounds pretty good to me. Yeah, so keep your eyes peeled for its especially big cheddar blocks on even I guess well, I definitely will. But let's talk a little bit more

broadly about cheese and how it's actually made. I don't know if you saw this number, but did you realize there over fourteen hundred different types of cheese out there? So that allows for a variety and flavors and textures and of course aromas that's really unparalleled by any other food. Yeah, there's actually this overview of cheeses from the nineteen sixties called the Cheese Book, and uh, it refers to cheese

as the wine of foods. And that's partially because the fermentation makes it possible to have this like tremendous amount of variants, even though cheeses are generally made from the same ingredients. And I know you looked into some of the early history of cheese. I definitely want to hear about that. But before we get into that, can I redo this one quote game found because it just made

me really happy? Sure, So what is it? So it's by this American writer Clifton Fatiman, who used to write for The New Yorker, and he wrote a cheese may disappoint, it may be dull, it may be naive, it may be oversophisticated, yet it remains cheese. Milks leap towards immortality. Oh man, I've got goose bumps from that. Man said, milks leap towards immortality. That's a big quote. I like that. Yeah, I love it too. But let's talk about cheese's humble beginnings.

So when you find out in your research, al right, so there are a lot of happy accidents in the history of the world so of course the discovery of penicillin falls into that category. So does the discovery of corn flakes and the invention of the slinky, and then of course there's cheese. I like the idea that, like penicilla and corn flakes, the slinky and cheese can all sort of hang out and have this one thing in common. So I've read basically the same story in a few places,

but this is how Wired told it. The whole thing began when a herdsman carrying a ruminate stomach brimming with milk found that by journeys in he had a bag full of curds and way. Now some stories claim this guy was an Arabian merchant, but whatever the case, for some reason he looked into this bag and it was using it to transport this milk, and he wasn't put off by the smell. And then he decided to stuff

that cheese in his mouth. I mean, I don't know why he would do this, but it was either good enough or interesting enough that he decided to do it again. And you know, that's the most common theory. But in terms of things we can point to the first real evidence of cheesemaking that we have is from like seventy years ago, and it was from an old pot in Poland, and the researchers at the University of Bristol found a vessel that looks like it was used to make cheeses.

Apparently the inners of the thing look very much like a modern cheese trainer, and after analyzing the nooks and the crevices of the thing that the scientists realized they were right. They found fatty acids still stuck in the container, which proved it had been used to separate the way from the Kurds in order to make cheese. So I'm always amazed by this sort of like historical detective work.

So I don't even understand, like, how do you know to look for fatty acids because something kind of looks like a cheese trainer. It's amazing. So do you know anything about why are Polish forefathers, I mean your Polish forefathers and my Polish forefathers father to make cheese? Like it feels like such a laborious effort when you've already got meat and milk at the ready. Well, if you think about it, a lot of it comes down to convenience.

So then transporting you know, cheese is a lot easier and its stores pretty well, and eating it meant you could settle down and sustain yourself without having to kill livestock for food. And the truth is the process hasn't changed all that much in years. I mean, the basic elements are still pretty much all the same. You let fresh milk ferment with bacteria that can be wild or cultured, and when there's enough facidity in your spoiled milk, you

had these enzymes to make it coagulate. So in that Origin of Cheese story I was telling, these enzymes would have come from the lining of the stomach bag that was being used to transport this milk. And it's called rennet, but it can be made in a lab now. And then you cut, stir and heat the product to remove

the fluid or the way. And finally you take the curds, you put them in the mold with salt and press them to get out all that extra liquid, and then you let it mature until it blooms into a delicious cheese that everybody wants to shoplift, I guess. But yeah, here's what's interesting. You remember those four hundred types of

cheese I mentioned earlier well. According to food scientists Paul Kinstead at the University of Vermont, the reason there's so many distinct types of cheese is because there are so many pre industrial communities that all needed a way to preserve milk, so they all figured out their own cheese recipes. You know, these different solutions for making cheese given their regions distinct climate or milk types or all sorts of

other conditions there. That's really fascinating. And you know, you always hear that term tarawa associated with wine, like all the elements of a region's terrain and these unquantifiable conditions that give a wine it's unique flavor, and you can see why that word gets applied to cheese as well. Speaking of tarawa, I was reading this BBC article on this cheese called baster Boten Soast. I'm obviously reading that off my notes because there's no way I could remember that.

But this cheese is super famous in Sweden. It's like this hard yellow cheese with tiny holes, and according to the BBC article, it's served everywhere. It's sort of like royal weddings, that the Nobel Prize dinner the at that restaurant Noma it's like the most famous rest armor whatever,

and there's even been poetry written about it. I mean, I feel like that's the ultimate compliment for cheese, is when a poem gets written about it and the Prince of Jordan claims it's what he loves about Sweden most. But the craziest thing about this cheese isn't that it's in such high demand, but that no one can replicate the cheese and other regions, and not even the dairy

that produces it itself. So apparently some years ago they tried to expand their operation to a nearby city, but none of the cheese they made there came out the same. Like they commissioned this elaborate research to figure out why they did all these like big chemical analyzes on the cheese,

but their scientists just couldn't figure it out. And they're all these theories, right, Like some people think there's this distinct micro flora in the building and and boor cross where the building where the cheese is aged and that supposedly gives it a distinct layer of flavor. Or there are these old spruce shelves and people think like that the cheese is aged on that is contributing to the flavor or um. Some people think the cows in the

usun get more sunlight and that affects their milk. Like they're all these theories in fact, like like one of the more far out ones is that, like there was a meteorite that hit the lake in town, and people think that affected the region's soil, So the soil is what's contributing. Anyway, There are a lot of ideas, but for whatever reason, no one's been able to replicate the

cheese's distinct flavor anywhere else. That really is fascinating. All right, well, why don't we pick this up with the origin of a cheese that's very replicable and that's American cheese. But let's do that right after a break. Welcome back to part time Genius. All right, Mango, before the break, I think you said something about how poetry about cheese might

be the ultimate compliment you can give a cheese. I really I'm going to have to disagree with you on this, So I'm curious where you're going with this, because I think the highest compliment might be when the Virgin Mary's face shows up on the side of your grilled cheese sandwich. You know, just to let you know you've got a

superior cheese on your hands. You know, I remember that Jesus cheeto, like the one that looked like Jesus on the cross, And I know there was a Jesus image that someone found on a marmite lid in Australia, But I don't really remember the grilled cheese Madonna you're talking about. Oh man, the story was pretty incredible and I remember it from the news as a kid. But it was

in this Florida woman made herself a grilled cheese. She then cut it in half, took a bite, and then stopped because she saw the Mother Mary staring back at her right there in her toast. I mean, this must have been an amazing experience. And then for some reason she decided to box the thing that this half sandwich, and and she put some cotton balls around it, and she kept it on her nightstand as a good luck charm. And she claims the blessed grilled cheese helped her win

seventy thousand dollars in a casino, among other things. And in that time it never actually sprouted mold, and that just increased her faith. And it's hours you know. But then in two thousand four, she decided to sell it on eBay, and the auction side initially took the listing down because I thought it was a hoax, but then they allowed it to go back up, and the Miracle on Toast sold for twenty eight thousand dollars to Golden

Palace dot Com, which is this online casino. So between her like seventy thousand and winning and this twenty thousand from this other casino, she basically, like milt a hundred thousand dollars out of casinos. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Yeah, So was it really a ten year old sandwich? Like, how come I didn't have any mold on it? Well, Brendan Corner at Slate actually did this analysis on and talked about all the factors that could have been contributing

to this. So the wonder bread would have had plenty of preservatives. I know, you might like wonder bread, but you might not be surprised to know there are a few preservatives in there. And the margine that was slathered on it would also protect the bread with its trans fats. And you know, the cook cheese itself could have changed the pH which would have slowed the molds growth as well. But that said, Corner did think it was pretty special that there was no mold at all on this sandwich.

I mean that that is unbelievable. But there's a bigger shock to this mego, and that was that a copycat sandwich with Hello Kitty's face, and you think that'd be a big deal. It only had a high bit on it of eighties cents, So sad well, I like that. No one saying top dollar for a miracle kitty sandwich. Actually, also, just for the record, when she sold the grilled cheese, the Florida woman insisted that whoever the next buyer was not devour the Mother Mary sandwich, and the casino not

surprisingly agreed to this. I mean, it's a ten year old sandwich. But speaking of special cheeses, I know you looked into the history of American cheese, so why don't you take a minute just to give us a quick rundown of it. So America rallied around making cheddar pretty early, and Cheddar was this incredibly hearty cheese. It weathered the temperatures and humidity really well on like some of the

other European cheeses. But it still tasted great, and by the seventeen nineties, the US was exporting cheese to England as quote Yankee cheese. It was also called American cheese back then too, and the upper classes in England looked down on this stuff, partially because it came from America, but also because they didn't think it stood up to the traditional English cheddars. And the quality really varied from

cheese to cheese. But it's sold to the lower classes in England because it's so cheap, and America sort of rallied around this cheddar cheese. So I don't know if you've gone to Upstate New York. Is my mother in law's from Upstate New York. But um, they're all these stores there that sells store cheese in the windows. Yeah, and I I never heard that term before. But the first time I saw it, I was so confused, like, what's store cheese? But that's just the term for local cheddar.

And it's almost like a house wine. But Upstate New York's love affair with cheese really took off in the eighteen fifties and eighteen fifty one in particular. That's when this gentleman named Jesse Williams started a cheese revolution by starting the first big cheese factory in upstate New York. Like his son wasn't a very good cheesemaker, apparently, and he decided to help him out by buying look from the surrounding areas, and together they made this more consistently

quality cheese. And according to David Clark, who was our you might remember who was our cheese historian at Mental Floss, the factories just took off in the region from there, and by the eighteen seventies, the US was sending over three hundred million pounds of cheese back to England every year. So Cheddar sort of became the default cheese. That's really interesting, and I like that we claim we had a cheese historian at Mental Flaws. That's pretty great. He was awesome, though.

So I do want to touch on things like Monterey Jack and other American cheeses, But how do we get from Cheddar to craft singles? Like? Is there actually a thread there? Yeah? Definitely. So one of the things I was stunned by was how early James Kraft was in the business. And actually Canada kind of comes to their love of craft honestly because he was a Canadian who moved to the States and saw this opportunity in whole

selling cheese. I guess he was trying to figure out how to reduce waste, because at first he was just trying to cram cheese into jars and then into cans apparently, which just seems so gross. But then in uh in nineteen sixteen, he stumbled into this genius idea and here

I'm quoting Clark again. By shredding refuse cheese, repasteurizing it, and mixing in some sodium phosphate, Kraft produced the strange wonder we now know as American processed cheese, and apparently it was this huge success from the start, right, Like Kraft was this true American salesman. He marketed his cheese, which was obviously made from scrap cheese, as this superior

product because it was more consistent. And by the nineteen thirties, over the cheese consumed in America was craft, which is crazy, right, So naturally this processed cheese had this much longer shelf life than anything that was natural, and when he got into supplying cheese for the troops, his business really took off. Of course, later cheese manufacturer's lobby to have Crafts product

called a cheese product instead of a natural cheese. Yeah, that's right, because you know, anything with less than I think it's fifty one cheese and it can't legally be called cheese, which which to me seems pretty fair if it's less than that. But you know, whatever, I hear the phrase cheese product, I always think of cheese whiz and how you told me that story about when the inventor of cheese was tried a jar of it. Decades later, he actually called up the hotline for the company because

it tasted so terrible. Yeah, they changed the formula to not use any cheese, and he called up the hotline to tell him it tasted like axle grease, like his exact words. But back to the graft single. So that was James's brother, Norman's invention. Norman Craft and he knew that sliced cheese from the store was pretty inconsistent, like

it came in all sorts of sizes and thickness. So in he started playing with ways to make a more convenient cheese and this was going to be a godsend to people, but it actually took him fifteen years to do it, but the way he did is kind of cool, Like he had these ribbons of cheese like hot cheese that would get poured and then cut by a machine and packaged in a block of eight peelable slices. It was a huge improvement, and the press actually raved about it.

They called him Mom Deluxe Process slices. And according to the New York Times, cheese slices used to curl and dry out and this solved those problems. So sales of Craft just skyrocketed after the innovation, all thanks to Norman. That just sounds like the name of the guy that should have invented Craft cheese, or should have invented this process cheese. But so so when did they actually start

coming individually wrapped? Yeah, so I looked at that too, and that wasn't until nine when this other inventor, I think he's in Indiana. He wasn't working for Craft, but he solved the problem of these sliced cheese blocks sticking together, and Craft saw the genius of the idea and came up with their own tweak on the process. So Bonap did this article glorifying the Craft single and as they put it, quote American cheese is the greatest cheese known to man, even if it really isn't cheese at all.

Oh ouch. So, actually, we always had craft singles in my house growing up, and partially it was because we use them for grilled cheese, like they were there for me and my sister to toast our own as a snack, but increasingly we only kept them in the house around

for my dog. Your dog, Yeah, she was like really greedy and she'd fly out the door and just stay a little out of range, and as a pup, we'd like chase her around until we caught her, Like our whole family would be out there trying to tackle her because she so widely. But then I think my mom realized that she loved American cheese. So as my dog ruled her, you'd call my dog's name and she just kind of ignore you. But then when you yelled the

word cheese and then you prove it. But with the sounds like the plastic just peeling off that craft single, then she'd suddenly come bounding back. I like that she needed the two pieces of proof there. That's pretty crazy. Well, like all my neighbors knew it, like they knew when we had like waving this craft single. They're like, what

was going on? That's pretty great. Well, craft obviously has a big part in American nostalgia, and you know, there's been this huge swing back from manufactured foods to the super artisanal stuff. And there was an article in Scientific American last year that said there are over four hundred craft cheesemakers in the US now, which is I think it's like double what it was just fifteen sixteen years ago. Yeah, and I'm sure it's a similar trend for like reason

artisanal pickle makers or whatever, pickle makers. Yeah. But what struck me about the Scientific American article was that it made this interesting point about how the American tarawa versus the European concept of it. And let me quote this article by the writer Leila Epplett. She says other European counterparts have an invention of tradition. Americans have what cultural anthropologists than m I T. Professor Heather Packson calls a

tradition of invention. You see, I flipped that thing. There's a little different, but it emphasizes this innovation and prioritizes change over continuity. So in France, the flavor of terrain described how the region and the people and the cultural tradition were all involved, and also like the technique, they

all contribute to the taste of the cheese. But in the United States, tear wise given this kind of more of an entrepreneurial and maybe an individualist twist, and and that helps to designate the taste of a particular farm and its products rather than you know, sort of that the taste of the cultural or the geographic region that

you might see from the European cheeses. And that's actually pretty interesting, uh, And I guess it makes sense because the US always has like this more individual spin on things,

and it makes sense for cheese as well. But I actually remember reading this article in an anthropology class in college about baseball and how unusual it is in sports for one person to face off against an entire team and you know that that's what every batter does one by one, right, but also how that's part of what makes it such an American game, like this mythic belief in the individual. And I don't know if it's a great argument, but I actually never thought about it that way.

But we should probably do another episode on cheese at some point, because there's so much we won't get to cover in this episode. And because as I've said many times, I could live on cheese. I love cheese so much. But I do want to cover some cheese super relatives because I love cheese so much. So how about we tackle that after a quick break. That's great, Okay, man, go today. We've got Christine Haney on the line now. Christine is an old friend of ours from her previous

life at the New York Times. She's a wonderful reporter and she's got a terrific news show on Netflix called Rot and it's all about food crimes. Welcome to the program, Christine. Thank you, it's great to be here. So tell us you're doing this show for Anthony Bourdain's production company, and it looks really beautiful. So I have to ask, why

did you choose to focus on food crimes? When I was at the Times, they had a conversation with some of the heads of Zero Points Are Productions, and one thing I found was that it was on maternity leave and I was watching bourdain show and just thought, as you said, it was a beautiful program, and I thought, like, why am I watching this? I haven't slept in months, there's something here really compelling, And so it actually just grew out of a conversation with VPD about the fact

that I had covered a lot of crime. I've sent you people to prison with my reporting and how that intersects with food. And they've done a lot of wonderful food shows like Mind of a Chef, Parts Unknown, and they've also done some crime shows like The Hunt with John Walsh, and I just said, why don't you marry the two? So they hired me to start looking into this area. And then when you start looking into food crimes and what has now become rotten, you see that

food fraud is just so rich with stories. And sorry to say, but if you're a criminal, this is the place to go. Anyone, any you know, job leads here. But because it's incredibly underregulated and you can make a lot of money, you can commit a lot of crime and you won't serve as much time. Well, I love that you're giving criminals advice on our show, and we in that sky with criminals, so that's great. But I just watched the show on Garlic and it really is

beautifully shy. It's fascinating, and and it was called Garlic breath, which I was just lighted by. But one of the things I thought was just so crazy was that you've got those clips of how garlic wasn't super popular before I think it's the sixties or seventies, and then they're all these commercials trying to introduce it to the public. Like that footage was hilarious and and obviously the documentary is super serious, but how did you learn that story?

We talked about how did you grow up with as much garlic? And then it really got into these free ranging conversations with my colleagues and CPZ about when you start eating more garlic? Were you influenced by Um Emerald? I mean, I remember watching Emeral logos when I was a federal courts reporter in Alabama covering death row cases, and he was just comfort So I always think of him with him saying like Garla, garlic, garlic, and so um.

That's where we kind of picked up on that history of how it's really taken off and it's integrated into everything that we eat now. But then it's married to this crazy crime that a lot of garlic in the US comes by way of Chinese prisons. I mean, that's just astounding to me, and can you tell us a little bit about how you discovered that story and how you managed to get that footage. So basically, I carried the sixty seven page lawsuit everywhere I went and just

kept reading it over and over. And you see in the episode there are all these people who have been sued in a rico case, like a racketeering case against this garlic company out in California, Harmony, which has offices

in China and California. And I just really started digging in and reaching out to the different players who had been sued Um, and one of them was this wonderful and then they makes use you who is from China, grew up in the Shandong province, came to New York to be a professor, lost his professorship after UM funding

went away. Um during made off and then Um went back into the garlic business and realized when he was home in a family vacation that the local housewives were complaining to him about how his their work had been taken there like at home work had been taken by where they used to peel garlic was now being done

by all the local prisons. So his son, he's this great tech guy who went to Columbia, helped him by a undercover camera, and he snuck into the prisons, presented himself as like an American businessman now and got us this incredible footage. And it is extraordinary also because his son knows like gadgets so well that the quality of the footage we have from inside of prison is his

I think extraordinary. Yeah, it really is. I'm a little bit concerned about about maybe we're not working hard enough because we haven't sent anyone to prison with our work on Part Time Genius, and we haven't had to sneak anyone out of China. We really got to step up our game here. But we are talking about cheese, which is awesome today, and so we we've talked about some funny cheese stuffs in this episode. But Christine, I'm curious, are there any cheese related scandals or just weird facts

that you're obsessed with. First, one thing everyone should know is that the way cheese is regulated is if you buy a pepperoni pizza, if the pepperoni makes you sick, that's regulated by the U. S d A. If the cheese makes you sick, it's regulated by the FDA. Well, I love that every bite of a slice of pepperoni pizza is like a delicious taste of bureaucracy. It is absolutely yes. So, Christine, my favorite thing about you as

a reporter is when you find whimsical stories. And and I know I've talked to you about your Bird Talk magazine story the at Food, which I loved so much, and and you found royalty and taxi cab drivers, and you just find great stories. But is there anything delightful going on in food or agriculture right now that you're kind of fascinated by. I am still three years in really enjoying writing about food and agriculture, and I think

the characters are wonderful. I've been spending a lot of time talking to this wonderful turkey farmer who won't eat turkey to be so close to with turkeys, so we eat pork on Thanksgiving and um, and I basically I'm talking to farmers at all hours now, so it's I'm getting very attuned to like the habits of livestock and how turkeys can be very sensitive. And it's just like a very entertaining and fun beats that's really wonderful. Well, I hope all of our listeners will check out Rotten

on Netflix right now. Christine Honey, thanks so much for being on Part Time Genius. Thank you. It's great chatting with you. Okay, so before we get off American Cheese is I do want to tell one last story, and that's the Jack and Monterey Jack. So there's actually a real jack behind that shoes. Yeah, it was this this scott. His name was David Jack, and he came to the

US in the eighteen forties. He was a contractor and he wasn't exactly like the laid back California dude, and he made a lot of money and started owning land and was supposedly this ruthless landlord, but he ended up with shares in a number of local dairy farms. Now, the truth is that Franciscan friars in the Monterey area had been making this distinctive cheese in the region for quite a while. But since he already had the milk, David Jack decided to co opt the friar's recipe and

get into the cheese business for himself. Initially, he called the product Jack's Cheese, but then he rebranded it Monterey Jack. So I mean, that's pretty cool that like monks have given us chantagne and cheese and and they get a little credit for it. Yeah, don't forget genetics, maga. I meant Mindel and his pea plants and all that. You're right though, they don't get credit. So, uh well, why don't we do a few superlatives before we get to the fact off, what would you have on your side?

All right? Well, how about the best cheese for when you want to spoil yourself? And I'm gonna go with with Puel for this, And it's that crumbly cheese from Serbia. It's actually donkey cheese. Do you remember when there are all those rumors that Djokovic, after going on that insane windstreak in tennis, decided to buy up all the donkey cheese in Serbia. It was so absurd and it was in the headlines for like a long time. I mean, you got a dream big when you're somebody like that.

And maybe it's a smart business strategy to corner that market. Because Puel sells for five hundred and seventy six dollars a pound. That's insane. So what makes it so expensive? Well, apparently it takes about twenty five leaders just to make a single kilogram of donkey cheese. Donkey cheese feels like it should be a phrase, like the synonym for going bananas. Like one second, Hector and I were having a normal conversation and then he went all donkey cheese on me.

I like that, who's Hector? Mango? I know, Hector don't want to I'm not sure this phrase is going to take off, but all right, what cheese would you like to honor? Actually, before I go, I read about this moose cheese from Sweden that sells for over four dollars a pound, and I think the idea is similar to your donkey cheese, except that I think moose might be more temperamental, Like if a moose senses any sort of disturbance, it'll go dry for a while. So milky one has

to be done super patiently and in total silence. And even then it's not like you're walking away with like a bucket of moose milk. The return for those two hours of quiet is pretty sparse. But I think the cheese is supposed to be like extraordinary. That is pretty interesting. But I feel like you're stalling, Mango. I mean, you haven't given me your cheese award yet. I know, because I'm not really prepared for this. Uh, let me look

through my notes. So, um, I don't want to say something about costume Marza, which is that illegal magot cheese, because it's too gross. How about the cheese worth losing your head over? And that would be brie. So, according to the story, Louis the sixteenth was fleeing from revolutionaries in France, but along the way, the monarch decided to take a pit stop at a tavern because his tom

tom was growling. And when he was apprehended before being taken to the guillotine, mind you, he was caught with this giant plate of brie in front of him, and he was just enjoying the cheese in a very leisurely manner, which is ridiculous. But I actually find it a little Shakespearean. Wait, first of all, did you say tom tom? I just wanted to be clear on that. I think that you did. But so, so, why why is this? Why is this Shakespearean? Uh? Because it's like a big question for her monarch right

to breathe or not to breathe? Oh gosh, I didn't think it could get worse than Tom. Tom, you really did say that, And now you've said to bree or not to breathe. But all right, well, why don't we pretend neither of those things happened, and let's just get straight into the fact. Off. All right, here's one for you. Did you know that, before lawmakers settled on the term process cheese, cheesemakers were lobbying to classify craft cheeses as

embalmed cheese. Do you know what Richard Nixon's last meal as president was? What's that? So? He had a pineapple slices, a glass of milk, and a bowl of cottage cheese. There's a photo of it online and it's actually so sad. But apparently cottage cheese was one of Nixon's favorite snacks, and he especially liked to eat it with ketchup. Oh. I actually am a fan of cottage cheese, but I don't understand. Actually I like all of those things, but

I don't understand that combat nation. If you've ever eaten pineapple and had anything with dairy in it, you know along with it, it is disgusting. That is so strange. Nixon was a strange man. Well, according to the site Addie McDonald's used the clever trick to cut costs back in two thousand and eight. They pulled one of the two slices of cheese from their double cheeseburger and renamed it the Mick Double. The move saved six cents per

sandwich and fifteen thousand dollars a year per restaurant. Wow, that's gonna add up. Do you know that the phrase the big cheese actually comes from Hindi like cheese and Hindi and or do actually means thing and the British picked up on it when they colonized India. The real cheese meant something that was top notch or like the real thing, and a big cheese evolved into this like

important person. Not everyone loved the term, though, so Wired reports that by people were using the word cheesy with sarcasm and using it to describe something negative, like I didn't realize that was that old? Yeah I didn't either. All right, Well you I have talked about the giant wheel of cheese Andrew Jackson received during his presidency, but apparently big wheels used to be a common present in America. When Thomas Jefferson was elected, he received the Mammoth of Cheshire.

It was this twelve hundred pound wheel of cheese and it was rolled through towns from Massachusetts, you know, like much fanfare along the way, and of course some ridiculed along the way as well. The cheese even had a Jefferson quote on the rind. It said, rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. And you know that this wasn't just in America, like a big wheel of cheese was a great way to show someone you cared in England too.

When Queen Victoria got married, her subjects pooled the milk of seven fifty cows to create a thousand pound wheel, and the townspeople were so impressed with their feet that they asked if they could put it on display and delay giving the present to her, which he agreed to. But when the exhibition was over and they tried to wheel the cheese back her way, the queen declined to give it a home. All right, what did you know that Philadelphia Cream Cheese isn't actually named for Philly, but

actually for the ont of Philadelphia, New York. It kind of ruins because I was just pictured Ben Franklin. They're smearing his toast within the mornings. I know, I always had such pride, like I lived near Philly, I thought it was from Philly. Um. This is a great one. In the eighteen sixties when Brazil was fighting the sea battle against Uruguay, Uruguayan ship ran out of ammunition, so they used cannonballs made out of stale eat um cheese that they had on board. But the weirdest part is

that it actually worked and they won the sea battle. Ah, that is a great story. But actually I've got one I've been saving that. I really think it's gonna be hard to top. So have you heard about the origin of the Packers cheese head hats? So it goes back to this guy named Ralph Bruno, and he was reappulstering his mom's couch when he realized he had an extra cushion. So he decided to get playful with it, and he

burned some holes into it and painted it yellow. Now, his mom banished him from the house because it smelled so bad, but he wore it to a Brewers game later that night, and somehow the ease head took off across Wisconsin sports. That's where it all began. I love that, and I also love that like, burnt cheese smells bad, but burnt cheese hats also smell bad. Yeah, well, I mean I like that you found the guy behind the American cheese trends, So I'm gonna give it to you.

Thanks so much. I feel like I needed this one. This is this is a good one. Well, thank you guys all for listening. Now, if we've forgotten any facts about cheese that you feel like we need to know, feel free to email us part Time Genius at how stuff Works dot com. You can also call us on our seven fact hotline that's one eight four four pt Genius, or hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. Thanks so

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