Oh please. This attitude is at least 20 years out of date. The US has a number of excellent, world class cheeses which are becoming more and more accessible every day. I can now walk into my local safeway and be confronted with an entire display case full of artisinal, high quality cheese.
True, certain things like raw milk cheese are unavailable but it's certainly not true that US cheeses universally taste like plastic.
There's cheese which is made in America which for most intents and purposes is cheese like everywhere else, and then there's "American cheese" which comes in slices or blocks and is "cheese product" and only vaguely resembles the real thing despite being delicious in certain guilty-pleasure situations.
The exact wording on American Cheese packages matters quite a bit [1]. Some of the Kraft American cheese sub-categories, including this one, are actual cheese.
If you look carefully, it's not actually called "American cheese". It's usually something like "American slices (pasteurized processed cheese product)" instead.
For the record, that was hyperbole, extrapolated from my opinion that the stuff tastes like plastic, and my other opinion that it is so far removed in taste and texture from any of the cheeses I like that it might as well not contain any cheese in the first place.
The other reply was correct. I'm not talking about all cheese in America, I'm talking specifically about the fact that Kraft slices are ostensibly "American cheese", but in reality are not legally "cheese".
> non-Americans are confused by "cheese products" like Kraft Singles and think that that is what we think cheese is, rather than being well known as not cheese
Just to be clear to non-Americans, we don't think that "cheese products" are real cheese. There are a number of welfare programs that help low-income Americans buy food; for example WIC [1]. If you take your WIC card to a grocery store and scan it in, the grocery store computer system will refuse to sell you "cheese products". You are not allowed to use government money to buy fake cheese! The computer will beep at you, the store clerk will say "sorry, you can't buy this, it's not real cheese", you will be embarrassed, and you will never, ever, ever make that mistake again!
There are enough people who buy that stuff (or else nobody would manufacture it). But it isn't because they are confused and think it is cheese.
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