What a weird take. Both are shit tier foods. Not sure what makes spray cheese somehow better.
Don't get me wrong, I love shit tier foods! And I think people should be free to enjoy them as they please. But what in the world makes one overly processed product better than the other? We aren't comparing a 5 course meal at a 5 star restaurant to a bowl of instant ramen. You're comparing stuff in the same tier as each other.
So there's a scene in A Goofy Movie where a guy gets paid for his part in some shenanigans by some edible substance in a spray bottle. Given that I was a kid in a non-English speaking country growing up and watching this movie dubbed to my native language, the substance that the character proclaims that he has received is 'Caramel sauce'.
It was only later in life, when I watched the movie with the original English language, that I learned that the character in reality proclaimed 'Cheez-Wiz'.
All of this to say that the concept of spray cheese was so foreign to our country that they decided to substantially change this scene.
Looking back, I think they should have kept the original - gulfing down caramel sauce straight from the bottle just doesn't hit the same as gulfing down spray cheese.
A few years back, I was dating an Italian woman (she was a uni lecturer here in the UK). One day, she saw me grating cheddar cheese onto a pizza and she went fucking mental
The thing is, if you don't complain about the food quality, daddy capitalism will make sure you'll eat the cheapest garbage possible.
And I think all the complaining is why food is so damn good in Italy. As a person from the North Europe, I can tell you that almost everything tastes so much better in Italy, and food is overall much higher quality.
That's why if you see a fat person in Italy, it's likely a tourist.
"This is not the cheese for pizza! Why? Why you do this?!" she kept saying over and over, I thought she was joking at first but genuinely distressed. Tbh she was a bit of a strange woman (and I say this as an objectively strange man). It didn't last longer than a few months!
Final straw was when she had been saying she missed home badly, so for her next visit I bought a dining table, assembled it myself, bought a bunch of Italian foods, some Italian wine, got it all setup with a nice tablecloth and spread when she got to mine, and she literally went "meh" when she sat down hahaha.
Only because they've never had beans on toast. Well because they've only ever eaten American style baked beans.
Do Americans even have toasters, they seem to think that a good breakfast constitutes a pile of butter and syrup, so I'm going to assume that they're not prepared to eat anything that doesn't have 300 kg of sugar in it.
I've seen this on the 'American shelf' in supermarkets before and was tempted by it as a novelty. I just looked at the Wikipedia and its just processed cheese extruded by a piston. Europeans buy processed cheese too, you get it in every supermarket. And maybe the smelting salts (is it called that?) are not too healthy when constantly consumed, but what isn't? I don't mind, let people have fun, stuff's hard enough as it is.
I agree with your sentiment, and I haven't had it for probably like 20 years, but it's nasty. As an American, I don't understand it. I won't tell anyone they shouldn't eat it (except for pointing out how much salt it has in it), but it really shouldn't exist I don't think. There are better ways to eat unhealthy things.
Same the Americans love their cheese is a bit like saying that the French love baguettes.
They do love their baguettes but they don't have much interest in any other type of bread. Equally Americans are not interested in any type of cheese that isn't neon yellow
As an American, I will observe that it has the property of melting perfectly on a properly-cooked burger. Does great in a grilled cheese sandwich as well. Since we eat a lot of burgers and grilled cheeses, we find it to be a useful cheese and eat a lot of it. And nachos, which are often made with american cheese since, as you say, it melts great into a sauce.
Most Americans don't use american cheese on everything that has cheese in it, but it has its specific role.
If you are making burgers, i highly recommend Raclette cheese. It doesn't melt quite as evenly as analogue cheese with sodium. But AOP Raclette cheese is natural and designed to melt - and it tastes so much better than any analogue.
You can make real cheeses melt better by using powdered sodium citrate. The ratio depends somewhat on how hard the cheese is but it's somewhere around 2-3% sodium citrate to cheese.
Every time one of my friends has flown across the pond I've asked them to bring back spray cheese, they've never been able to find it! I want to experience this monstrosity, though to be fair I am an absolute savage.
"Processed cheese spreads, like Easy Cheese, have a moisture content that ranges from 44 to 60%, while its milk fat content must be greater than 20%.[4] Milk proteins are needed for processed cheese spread production, and contains two main types: casein, which accounts for at least 80%, and whey protein, which can further be classified into α-lactalbumin and β-lactoglobulin. The manufacturing of processed cheese spreads uses natural cheese with a composition that ranges from 60 to 75% intact casein."
-"Yay! Finally due for some American-style freedom and democracy! At last the mathematical majority of the populace will decide who gets elected! No longer will an elite clique of corruptible intermediaries have the last word on who gets to be in power in the country!"
I've eaten it once. More as a sort of, "let's see what the fuss is about" than any real desire to eat cheese from a can. It was decidedly meh. Mostly I just remember it being really salty and not tasting anything like cheese, but it probably wasn't the worst thing I've ever eaten, either.
Anyway, it's always at the grocery store (in CO), so presumably someone is buying it.
I’ve seen it in the northeast US in the 1980’s. I think my folks let me get it a few times as a kid, even though they generally didn’t allow that kind of junk food.
More recently I’ve seen versions made for dogs so you can spray cheese into a Kong or something. I might get that for my dog. Dogs don’t live for 80 years so the random cancer from ultra processed food might not catch up with them (of course, it would only be an occasional treat)
If you value the sense of smell for your dog, read up about it. I don't know spraycan cheese and certainly not the one for dogs. But ppl mentioned that the human kind is rather salty.
Natural cheese itself is pretty salty. Enough to cause a dog to loose quite a bit of its smell. They love cheese and will eat all they can get. But if it is a hunting, S&R, truffle, drug, etc. dog - they will likely loose their job.
I had the same idea for a while, but as taco addicted Norwegians unsatisfied with the current cheese options in our meaty tex mex burritos, and we were seduced by Adam Ragusea's cheese sauce with sodium citrate emulsifier.
We tried and dropped the whole "mix lemon juice with baking soda until no longer tart" and just bought the finished sodium citrate (E331) instead.
The result with that was a cheddar sauce so smooth and awesome that I don't believe for a second that any of you to the south could outcompete it, no matter how expensive or funky you go.
Perfectly emulsified cheddar cheese sauce is magnificent. It was like 90% cheddar. It was delicious.
Like I said in different comment, mayo is egg product, but calling it eggs is wrong. Same here. If it's made from cheese and turned into mush with bunch of other elements, then it's not cheese it's cheese flavored mush or cheese based mush.
There's a ton of degenerate things in Europe too. For instance, italians have a pizza with potatoes on top. Swedes like cheese inside their coffee. Swedes also like tomato sauce, cheese and i think ham paste off an aluminium toothpaste like squeeze tube. Swedes are absolute lovable degenerates.
Germans have these devices which look like a massive cow tit to "milk" as it were, their ketchup and mayonnaise from.
In Finland we have these at some restaurants, more often on a fast food places at the kitchen:
Apparently they're more convenient to use for the kitchen staff than a squirt bottle. Fill the thing with ketchup/mustard/mayonnaise and you can 'milk' appropriate amount of whatever on the dish. They're not commonly used by customers, for obvious reasons.
And cheese in coffee is absolutely a thing, but it's not just any cheese, you need to have bread cheese.
When I read horrifying things about other countries' cuisines I usually just shrug and say 'cultural differences'. Eggs boiled in piss? 'Cultural differences'. Duck embryos on toast? 'Cultural differences'. Cheese swarming with maggots? 'Cultural differences'.
But this... if a Swede popped up in front of me right now and said "yeah, I like to inject hot ham water directly into my eyeballs", I think I'd have a better shot at understanding and accepting.
Swedes in general do not like cheese in their coffee and would have no idea what you're talking about. I can only assume you're thinking of kaffeost/juustoleipä which is only found locally in certain areas of the north and Finland. It's also delicious by the way, think salty cubes of hard cheese that you put in coffee and eat with a spoon. It makes a squeaking sound between your teeth and can also be eaten on the side as a cheesecake with cloudberry jam. (The coffee should also be pot-boiled in the traditional way.)
Swedes used to drink coffee in small cups with 1-2 lumps of sugar and cream in it. That was the standard way for adults to drink coffee 40 years ago here before globalization really kicked in - now a standard café in Sweden is exactly like anywhere else in the world.
I do not quite remember local word for it, but yes, i saw it while travelling through Kiruna, so it was in the north.
I had it. My southern European self considered becoming anti Schengen because of it. I love your country, but you people should be banned from having coffee.
Also yeah, the whole world is very similar in many aspects, but the comment was about funny degenerate things I've seen across Europe and that is pretty degenerate. Just poking a little fun, is all.
I can get ketchup from a massive cow tit!? holy shit based.
omg I found them these are actually brilliant, unlike the pump bottles you'll never get the random money shot of condiment that misses your hotdog completely and gets on your shirt.
In the Netherlands it is fairly common to spread margarine on bread (along with something like chocolate sprinkles, cold cuts or cheese). I think it tastes disgusting.
I’ve tried american boxed mac n cheese once. I think it was also kraft brand. It was utterly disgusting. Had nothing to do with cheese and barely with maccaroni… eating a block of butter is a strangely similar yet more pleasant experience and probably more nutritious.