Negotiating the Vending of some Cheesy Comestibles

I like cheese, but I'm not sure how to feel about Pasteurized process cheese food. Are you? If you hadn't noticed yet, many of the sliced cheeses you buy at the supermarket is labelled with some starkly plain wording, untouched by the hands of the marketing department. Cheese food, cheese product, imitation cheese and pasteurized process cheese product...all these terms seem chosen to scare off anyone who reads the package and thinks "But...I just want to buy some cheese!"

Luckily for us, Steve Ritter wondered the same thing a few years ago and wrote down what he found out. It turns out they each describe a cheese made from different blends of cheese, fat, moisture, curds, whey etc. It doesn't appear than any of them are hideously unnatural, but I'm surprised they use such odd, direct terminology to describe each of the "non-cheese" varieties. I know a lot of businesses go out of their way to make sure their products have "nice" names that won't cause potential buyers to hesitate if they read the packaging carefully.

I ended up buying some sliced Havarti today - real cheese :)

Other than that, I had a very productive morning - I ran several errands and did the laundry and grocery shopping, and tonight I have the final concert of the band I'm in, and then we take a break for the summer. We have to show up early tonight to have a band photograph taken - this happens every five years, so I'll post a picture when I get a copy.