Those Kraft-y liars...

My roommate told me some shocking news yesterday. In reading a mouth-watering article about Macaroni and Cheese in yesterday's New York Times's Dining & Wine section, she stumbled upon a dirty little secret of the cheese industry.

American cheese is simply cheddar or colby that is ground and emulsified with water, said Bonnie Chlebecek, a test kitchen manager at Land O'Lakes in Arden Hills, Minn.

Who knew this? Why didn't anyone tell me? I feel I've been lied to all these years-that America had produced a lovely unique cheese to call its own. Cheese-making is one of those things, like butter-churning and candle-making that has been done for the past million years or so that was perfected way before America was even born. The fact that we had discovered (so I thought) a new cheese, that we contributed to the old-world way of life in some small part, is a lovely thought. But alas, what I thought was charming innovation in a traditional process was actually a water-downed block of cheddar. Shocked and appalled.