The Cheese We Eat

Its about cheese

'Cheese sticks, cheese lasagna, cheesecake, cheese and broccoli, cheeseburger, cheese quiche, cheese omelet, goat cheese, cheddar cheese, Swiss cheese, blue cheese, parmesan cheese, ...' the list goes on and on. However, despite the abundance of cheese in the food we eat it often goes unnoticed. Cheese is an under rated food that deserves more recognition than it gets. Cheese is a food that has been around for years, it is very abundant, and above all, cheese is a healthy food. It is one of the most nutritious food products available to us.

Cheese is now produced on a large scale in highly mechanized factories. The factories bought mass production to the cheese industry, this mass production made cheese an abundant food product that became available in supermarkets all over the world. Before the mechanical age began cheese was mostly produced in the farmhouse. The farmer would milk his cows and use some of the extra milk to make cheese.

Variety of cheeses on serving platter

A wedge of Unpasteurised West Country Cheddar chee...

Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, the true "parmesan"

This way none of the valuable nutrient was wasted, since milk cannot be stored and cheese can. The oldest cheese making artifacts found date back from 2000 BC. It is thought that man stumbled on cheese accidentally. It would have been produced when milk being carried in the stomachs of cows reacted with enzymes in the wall of the dead animals stomach. This reaction would produce a cheese like curd.

It is the production of cheese in so many regions of the world that created so many different varieties of cheese. It impossible to state the number of named varieties of cheese in the world because new names are constantly being introduced. Most cheeses are named after a town or region. Probably the most famous cheese name, cheddar, come from a small town in England.