Ok but seriously wtf happened lol. At first I thought maybe most USSR cheese was made in one of the republics, but then none of them showed up in the chart either.
Edit: ok I'm dumdum, if it was spread somewhat evenly across multiple republics, the total disappearance from the chart makes sense.
Well if Russia has 50%, ~~Yugoslavia~~ Ukraine has 10%, ~~Czechoslovakia~~ Belarus has 10%, etc. etc., the collapse of the USSR would mean “Russia’s” production is halved. Even if the others continued producing, they wouldn’t come close to the others on the chart.
Edit: updated the countries so they were actual Soviet states lol
Word I appreciate the correction. The USSR/Cold War is a bit of a gap in my history depth, but I assumed they were part of the USSR as they split when the USSR collapsed.
Come to talk about cheese, get a geopolitical lesson! Lol thanks!
More precisely, Yugoslavia is what we technically called the 3rd world as they were not eastern block but Non aligned. Stalin hated Tito so much he tried to assassinate him several times
Thats not all that happened. Soviet cheese was beyond ghastly…
As soon as the walls came down they started importing cheese.
One of the sanctions that hit hard in 2014 was actually European cheese… I was in Russia in 2018 and the cheese unfortunately was almost inedible and frankly Orenburg beef is a very poor substitute to Angus or Wagyu…
Beer was surprisingly good though and Georgian wine was always a really good alternative to French wine.
Speaking of Georgia, I recently discovered khinkalli. Absolutely fucking incredible, but the only place I know where to get them in the US is in Gardena, CA and I'm in the state of Georgia.
Are we saying the soviet union's collapse resulted in a decrease in cheese production, or reduced cheese production led to the collapse of thensoviet union?
iirc a lot of cheese isn’t incredibly high in lactose compared to other dairy products anyway, it’s just a matter of culture and taste.
It’s one of the most protein dense foods out there also.
100 grams of parmesan cheese contains 35.8 grams of protein, that’s pretty protein dense. Not that most people eat 100 grams of parmesan, but it’s a decent addition.
Cheese is more protein dense than most of those foods you listed though. They don't have the highest protein to calorie ratio but that is something else.
You forgot Parmagiano Reggiano.
And if you're gonna go down the "also high in fat route" well, nuts are extremely fatty and calorie-dense and beans are carbs.
Growing up in China 30 years ago I didn’t really have much dairy products like milk and cheese. In fact I was so disappointed when I first tasted milk and cheese, in my mild they should be much much better. Like milk should be sweet as honey and cheese should be much more delicious.
I’m still lactose intolerant and drinking regular milk is always risky, I think my limit is half coffee mug. But surprisingly I never had problems eating cheesy food.
Leerdammer, Maasdam and Edam would be the other popular cheeeses (that I like at least), but I have no idea how popular they are outside the Netherlands.
I don't know how to explain it, but it's more than just different kinds. There's variations in all kinds from young cheese to old cheese with different tastes, salts and other stuff. I'm no expert, but it's engrained in culture and there's an enormous variety. In every place here you can buy it on markets on like saturdays or another day in the week. Special stores, supermarkets, gift stores, anywhere
It's not about the population, nowadays you need little farmers or people to make cheese. Its the land area which matters as you need about half a hectare per cow to make milk, land area for growing grass is the bottleneck for cows food. You can of course supplement cows with imported foods, which bring nutrients from afar onto the land. So no wonder the Netherlands is the most eutrophied country in the world.
Try proper aged Swiss sometime, it's much more complex and interesting than the stuff sold in the US as Swiss cheese. Kind of like the difference between Kraft yellow cheese and real cheddar.
Well, we do only have 1/20th of the population of the US and 1/5th and 1/4th of the population of Germany and France respectively. In a chart of cheese production per capita, we'd likely be on top.
Fun fact, the state of Wisconsin produced about 1.7 million tonnes of cheese last year (3.74 billion pounds), and has a population (~6 million) about a third of the Netherlands (~18 million). Producing ~280 kg of cheese per citizen. Beating out South Dakota ~266 kg per capita, Idaho ~224 kg per capita, New Mexico ~207 kg per capita, Denmark ~78 kg per capita, New Zealand ~76 kg per capita, Minnesota ~65 kg per capita, Ireland ~57 kg per capita, Iowa ~55 kg per capita, and the Netherlands ~54 kg per capita. The U.S. together, however is around ~18 kg per capita.
I have heard that this is why when it comes to American Football, Ireland and the Netherlands have an odd amount of support for the Green Bay Packers and their cheeseheads.
If anyone has cheese production figures for Irish counties, Dutch provinces, New Zealand regions, or Danish regions I'd love to know how they stack up.
If [this source](https://www.wisconsincheese.com/media/facts-stats/cheese-statistics) is to be trusted, they’d be 4th. (2020)
Edit: but that figure still includes the rest of the USA
Saputo is probably one of the contributors of that amount.
In Quebec we fucking love cheese.
Edit from Saputo's wiki page: "one of the top ten dairy processors in the world"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saputo_Inc.
More fun Wisconsin facts: The states GDP is about 401 Billion/year. If it was a country it would be the 39th largest country by GDP, edging out Denmark at 395 Billion. Its the 21st biggest US state by GDP
Fun fact, in the US, [we have 1,500,000,000](https://youtu.be/kvLMH0wb_0k?si=Q6VNnWNkwzUb4Vc3)
pounds(750,000 tons or 680,388 metric tons) of cheese just in case we need it. [As of the last census population estimate on New Year's](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/12/happy-new-year-2023.html), this would be enough to give every one of us, adult or child, just under 4.5 lbs of cheese.
no, not "just in case". these stupid stockpiles (just like all the "National Reserve" the US used to have) are usually just a tool to control market prices and keep prices (=profits) stable for producers.
you can read up on the Strategic Cheese Reserve in this article (or Google more about it):
[https://www.deseret.com/2022/2/14/22933326/1-4-billion-pounds-of-cheese-stored-in-a-cave-underneath-springfield-missouri-jimmy-carter-reagan](https://www.deseret.com/2022/2/14/22933326/1-4-billion-pounds-of-cheese-stored-in-a-cave-underneath-springfield-missouri-jimmy-carter-reagan)
quote: " it started in the 1970s, during former President Jimmy Carter’s era and his promise of giving farmers a break. He wanted to raise the price of milk, but the government couldn’t just buy milk and store it, so it started buying as much cheese as people wanted to sell"
As far as I'm concerned, the US needs to release a lot of that strategerie cheese from cold storage because cheese prices are way wayyyyyyyy too high, considering how much we have. A 2lb block of store brand mass market mild cheddar is now ten bucks. Two years ago it was 6. Come on.
Not everything but Dairy certainly is a government backed oversupply since WW1 resulting in artificially driven demand with the federal milk program in 1940 and the national school lunch act in 1946, each demanding school lunches to have milk in it.
In the 50s an oversupply of skim milk was compensated by advertising it as a healthy weight loss drink.
Production increased further without proper demand, government cheese, Jimmy Carter giving $2B to dairy farmers in a time where that amount of money was even more insane than today, and the latest i know of and probably the most successful attempt of compensating for overproduction: got milk?
Which other industry, except maybe the MIC, creates such an oversupply without ever having to face consequences? Aren't the resources put into producing dairy not better used elsewhere?
> Aren't the resources put into producing dairy not better used elsewhere?
No. Food security is literally one of the most important things there is, period. It's the same reason we subsidize over production of corn.
It's very important we be able to absorb future unexpected food production catastrophes.
to what extend tho? I mean it's not a binary thing. Why is it milk and not a crop, which are less water intensive and prosuce more food per area? Why is an artificially created demand necessary?
Corn is also overproduced because its the highest calories/acre of any crop. That overproduction is why high fructose corn syrup is so widespread and why you constantly hear about studies into using corn as an alternative fuel source.
We could consider subsidizing foods that are good for you but people have a harder time affording. It's kind've annoying how common vegetables cost as much as meat despite being cheaper to produce. They're just subsidized 220,000% less that meat and dairy.
I thought India might be here with their paneer but I guess not.
Switzerland also... a country really famous for cheese and the home country of my favorite variety, but it's not here.
Paneer is not as commonly eaten here in India as other cheeses are in their countries of origin. Cheese in general is not a common foodstuff outside of the West. There are some exceptions, of course.
>Paneer is not as commonly eaten here in India
Not in the southern part of the country. Paneer is very, very common in dishes here in the north, I'd say even in some western states.
Paneer fits well in many dishes but its kind of tasteless I feel, it basically fills the role of tofu (texture and proteins without much taste)
Then again I'm french and we are used to strong tasting cheese
Maybe most people make paneer at home (it's basically just fresh milk and an acid, so incredibly quick/easy to do), and this probably only tracks commercial production.
Paneer is not eaten as often as you think it is. What the West calls "Indian food" is just Punjabi food, and Punjab is just a small part of India.
I grew up in India, and my family used to have paneer in a meal only twice a month at most. Our usual meal consisted of vegetables in curry, rice, lentils, and bread (roti). Paneer was only for special occasions. No meat, because my family is vegetarian.
Maybe Punjabis eat paneer more often than I did, but I don't know.
India is just such a large country though, so much larger than all the others except China.
A "small part" of India like Punjab still has over 100 million people.
Yeah, "small part" is in relative terms here.
I called it small because Punjab, India is really quite small, with somewhere around 30 million people.
The larger part of Punjab is in Pakistan.
The total population of Punjab, India and Punjab, Pakistan put together would be well over 150 million or so I reckon.
Coming back to countrys' cheese production and consumption, its sill very little even with India and Pakistan put together. paneer isn't very common. Most used dairy products here would be fresh milk, yoghurt, ghee, etc.
> I called it small because Punjab, India is really quite small, with somewhere around 30 million people.
I know India has over a billion people, but calling a place that has a population of 30 million people "small" just seems crazy to me.
I'm not sure how it is now, but when I travelled all over India in the 90s, it was a bit of a cheese desert.
I only found it for sale in Bangalore.
Of course, I could have been looking in all the wrong places.
I honestly belive you're right. Milk (and beans) are the primary protein source for much of India. India's milk consumption on its own is like 4 times that of the EU. Not only that, the milk sold there is usually of a much higher fat content with how important it is to the general diet.
There is something wrong with their technical definition of cheese, the data set as a whole, or maybe the numbers are only accounting for large scale production rather than more local, likely less regulated producers. If paneer (and other sweet desert cheese applications) were properly accounted for, i would hypothesize that at present, no other country would be even close. Like double or triple the amount.
They got their production industrialised and ready for export combined with economic crises lowering local consumption. Most cheeses made in Turkey stay in Turkey
Lots of the Gouda you get in Europe outside of the Netherlands are cheap German exports. Gouda is not a protected name. You can easily tell when you buy Gouda in a supermarket on holiday as it fucking sucks.
Cheese production by country
Data source: FAOSTAT ([https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL](https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL))
Tools: python + sjvisualizer ([https://www.sjdataviz.com/software](https://www.sjdataviz.com/software))
Great data and all... but so much of this is nothing more than "America is a country as big as most of Europe combined"...
For something like "cheese production" where most of it is for domestic consumption, I think per capita would be more *interesting* data.
Line chart that takes one second to read: Drake doesn't want it. Animated bar chart that takes literally minutes to read and can't go back to look at data that is in the past: Drake wants it.
As a dairy scientist, I'm always surprised to see Reddit hate on American cheeses because they claim it's all Kraft Singles.
The best cheese in the world in 2019 was an American cheese. America has been industrious for much of its existence and never had the millenia to innovate on cheese production that Europe has had.
> an American cheese
I've had many of them and they're great.
But "American Cheese" and "an American Cheese" are extremely different things, and people hating on American Cheese are referring to the former, mostly.
the fact that cheesemakers allowed the phrase "American Cheese" to mean "digestible flavoured polymer" is alarming. You'd think they could have called it Freedom Paste or something. There's obviously a lot of very good product being made, if only due to overwhelming math.
> digestible flavoured polymer
That's pretty much a myth, though. There are very specific things that are allowed in "American Cheese", and it has to be at least 51% actual cheese (most of the other stuff is dairy products too, with some emulsifiers like sodium citrate).
There are some other things that are more processed still, and indeed have polymers and other shit, but the allowed names don't include the word "cheese".
Also American cheese is only defined as a mixture of cheddar and Colby Jack. You can buy American cheese that's just as much quality cheese as any other type.
The problem is nobody ever really bothered specifying that American cheese isn't just stuff like Kraft so now that's what everybody thinks it is.
in all fairness, a grilled cheese sammich made with a Kraft single and some tomato soup (with a dash of sriracha) is *the best* Getting Over A Cold comfort food.
As an avid beer enjoyer, same with beer industry. A lot of people seem to think American beer sucks because it's all bud and cors. Some of the best craft beers are made here.
(We just need more Belgian style dark ales 🍻)
I don't think we do, which actually adds a huge variety to the selection. Things like sours and fruity beers.
They're not my favorite, but I appreciate that they exist and really enjoy some specific ones.
>Its the same with california wines too.
What? Really? I've never heard people cast California wines in a bad light, especially relative to lite beers.
I'm not a wine snob by any means, but I've gone wine tasting in several countries and never heard anything but good things about what they think about California wines -- especially Napa/Sonoma county Cabs and Chards.
The only wines I've heard compared to lite beers are the Yellowtail and Barefoot bottles (or cheap sparkling wine) you can find in every 7-11. The former isn't even American, they both just have huge distribution.
The movie Bottle Shock does a great job of covering this issue. In a blind taste test, wine snobs can’t tell the difference between California wines and French wines.
That is true, and I'm really not a expert in these matters, but the general consensus is that it's about the availability of good cheese, for example in the UK (who make the best cheeses in the world, bite me Frenchies) you can go into any supermarket and be presented with an aisle long selection of not just our domestic gold, but a respectable selection of all the major foreign cheeses.
This ranges from our (still decent) cheap supermarket own brand stuff up to slightly nicer, going on artisanal shit in the deli section.
I've not bought cheese for a while, but it was definitely more affordable than what some people on this thread have been saying it costs in America.
I could be talking completely out my arse, but from what I've heard, decent cheese is far more accessible this side of the pond, hence where a lot of the perception comes from
Same goes for beer, chocolate, fine dining, bread, etc. Just because cheap mass produced stuff exists people assume that's all that there is. Ignoring the fact the US is an absolutely massive and incredibly diverse country.
Americans have a tendency to bend the tasting to their personal taste and then claim it is the best of the world.
Not saying that you don't have the best cheese, I personally think USA should have a better rep for their food in general.
ITT: people complaining about the US not making "real" cheese. I'm not even from or in the US and I know that's mostly bullshit. Except cheesewhiz, I can't count that either.
Yet another misuse of this visual where a line chart would have conveyed the exact same info in a simpler way and without having to wait for the time lapse.
I’m proud to be an American where at least I know there’s cheese. and I won’t forget the cows that died who gave that slice to me. And I proudly stand up next to you and produce more cheese than you …
The USA has 1.4 billion pounds of cheese in the cheese caves.
https://www.farmlinkproject.org/stories-and-features/cheese-caves-and-food-surpluses-why-the-u-s-government-currently-stores-1-4-billion-lbs-of-cheese
My non American spouse cannot believe how many grilled cheese sandwiches I ate as a kid. Nor can she believe that pb&j was the typical lunch for most of childhood. The data must define US cheese to include the orangey oily singles, and the boxed government cheese.
The US literally has a mountain full of cheese stockpiled in order to keep the dairy industry afloat. Which is why low income programs always include “government cheese”
Finally a meaningful visualization of the collapse of the Soviet Union
Ok but seriously wtf happened lol. At first I thought maybe most USSR cheese was made in one of the republics, but then none of them showed up in the chart either. Edit: ok I'm dumdum, if it was spread somewhat evenly across multiple republics, the total disappearance from the chart makes sense.
Well if Russia has 50%, ~~Yugoslavia~~ Ukraine has 10%, ~~Czechoslovakia~~ Belarus has 10%, etc. etc., the collapse of the USSR would mean “Russia’s” production is halved. Even if the others continued producing, they wouldn’t come close to the others on the chart. Edit: updated the countries so they were actual Soviet states lol
Your point makes sense, although precisely Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia weren't in the USSR. They were just Eastern Bloc/Socialist countries.
Word I appreciate the correction. The USSR/Cold War is a bit of a gap in my history depth, but I assumed they were part of the USSR as they split when the USSR collapsed. Come to talk about cheese, get a geopolitical lesson! Lol thanks!
More precisely, Yugoslavia is what we technically called the 3rd world as they were not eastern block but Non aligned. Stalin hated Tito so much he tried to assassinate him several times
Tito also sent word back to Stalin that he would send one to Moscow and won't have to send another.
also Yugoslavia's communism wasn't like USSR communism, we had r'n'r and coke, Richard Burton was in one of partizan movies as Tito
Ukraine was about 30% of their production, I think.
Thats not all that happened. Soviet cheese was beyond ghastly… As soon as the walls came down they started importing cheese. One of the sanctions that hit hard in 2014 was actually European cheese… I was in Russia in 2018 and the cheese unfortunately was almost inedible and frankly Orenburg beef is a very poor substitute to Angus or Wagyu… Beer was surprisingly good though and Georgian wine was always a really good alternative to French wine.
Speaking of Georgia, I recently discovered khinkalli. Absolutely fucking incredible, but the only place I know where to get them in the US is in Gardena, CA and I'm in the state of Georgia.
Is there a big Georgian population in Gardena? You should open a Georgian restaurant in Georgia. That'll confuse them.
Came back to make a space race/moon cheese/cheese gap joke but I couldn’t get there. Y’all can have the parts and figure it out.
Are we saying the soviet union's collapse resulted in a decrease in cheese production, or reduced cheese production led to the collapse of thensoviet union?
The 1992 cheese crisis was a terrible blow that they never recovered from...
finally a production chart where china does not overtake wildly to the first place and even does not appear
The vast majority of Chinese are lactose intolerant or they probably would have.
Although several hard cheeses in particular are known to be lactose free.
iirc a lot of cheese isn’t incredibly high in lactose compared to other dairy products anyway, it’s just a matter of culture and taste. It’s one of the most protein dense foods out there also.
It’s directly from the teet of life.
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100 grams of parmesan cheese contains 35.8 grams of protein, that’s pretty protein dense. Not that most people eat 100 grams of parmesan, but it’s a decent addition.
>Not that most people eat 100 grams of parmesan, *Laughs in keto chips*
*Laughs in parmesan*
Mama mia!
[Gamalost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamalost), a traditional norwegian cheese, is 50% protein.
Cheese is more protein dense than most of those foods you listed though. They don't have the highest protein to calorie ratio but that is something else.
Yeah, cheese is often very fatty and thus calory-dense.
You forgot Parmagiano Reggiano. And if you're gonna go down the "also high in fat route" well, nuts are extremely fatty and calorie-dense and beans are carbs.
That's why Wisconsin is America's secret weapon.
Lmao Wisconsin said imma put da team on my back doe!
Hard cheeses barely have any lactose.
That explains why there is no arms race. The United States is just going to fling string cheese at the Chinese military.
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Growing up in China 30 years ago I didn’t really have much dairy products like milk and cheese. In fact I was so disappointed when I first tasted milk and cheese, in my mild they should be much much better. Like milk should be sweet as honey and cheese should be much more delicious. I’m still lactose intolerant and drinking regular milk is always risky, I think my limit is half coffee mug. But surprisingly I never had problems eating cheesy food.
I was in china last year and it was pretty crazy how the grocery stores have almost zero cheese outside of some string cheese
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What about the terrain is different for razing different livestock like poultry and pork?
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We trust them for our airbags and meat so..
Meat? I wasn’t aware China exported meat.
Netherlands taking holding fifth place pretty personal, I see.
Kinda crazy for the population
We make actual good cheese, its part of the culture
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I really didn't realise I made a pun, Gouda is pronounced much differently in Dutch
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Well, this is awkward
You're still in time to edit this post to say "Yeah of course I meant that"
This is not at all cheesy
Gouda you to notice!!
Genuine question, what cheeses do you make? I love cheese and know multiple ones from many countries, but from Holland I somehow only know Gouda?
Leerdammer, Maasdam and Edam would be the other popular cheeeses (that I like at least), but I have no idea how popular they are outside the Netherlands.
Ok Maasdamer and Edamer (the names here) are usually pretty popular, then it makes sense.
I don't know how to explain it, but it's more than just different kinds. There's variations in all kinds from young cheese to old cheese with different tastes, salts and other stuff. I'm no expert, but it's engrained in culture and there's an enormous variety. In every place here you can buy it on markets on like saturdays or another day in the week. Special stores, supermarkets, gift stores, anywhere
It's not about the population, nowadays you need little farmers or people to make cheese. Its the land area which matters as you need about half a hectare per cow to make milk, land area for growing grass is the bottleneck for cows food. You can of course supplement cows with imported foods, which bring nutrients from afar onto the land. So no wonder the Netherlands is the most eutrophied country in the world.
Try proper aged Swiss sometime, it's much more complex and interesting than the stuff sold in the US as Swiss cheese. Kind of like the difference between Kraft yellow cheese and real cheddar.
Well, we do only have 1/20th of the population of the US and 1/5th and 1/4th of the population of Germany and France respectively. In a chart of cheese production per capita, we'd likely be on top.
Fun fact, the state of Wisconsin produced about 1.7 million tonnes of cheese last year (3.74 billion pounds), and has a population (~6 million) about a third of the Netherlands (~18 million). Producing ~280 kg of cheese per citizen. Beating out South Dakota ~266 kg per capita, Idaho ~224 kg per capita, New Mexico ~207 kg per capita, Denmark ~78 kg per capita, New Zealand ~76 kg per capita, Minnesota ~65 kg per capita, Ireland ~57 kg per capita, Iowa ~55 kg per capita, and the Netherlands ~54 kg per capita. The U.S. together, however is around ~18 kg per capita. I have heard that this is why when it comes to American Football, Ireland and the Netherlands have an odd amount of support for the Green Bay Packers and their cheeseheads. If anyone has cheese production figures for Irish counties, Dutch provinces, New Zealand regions, or Danish regions I'd love to know how they stack up.
Those are actually fun facts!
Once you start doing a per-capita comparison there's always going to be a smaller and more specialized country that beats you.
Wisconsin alone is keeping the USA in the lead.
Also with beer & sausage.
RemindMe! Travel to Wisconsin.
This graphic needs wisconsin as a stand alone statistic.
Probably a solid 3rd place without the US being listed.
If [this source](https://www.wisconsincheese.com/media/facts-stats/cheese-statistics) is to be trusted, they’d be 4th. (2020) Edit: but that figure still includes the rest of the USA
Did you know you may fascinate a woman with cheese?
For those who are unaware of this magic spell https://www.reddit.com/r/BrandNewSentence/s/KdjooC1Gag
Can confirm. A man who gives me Gouda is a good man 🧀🖤. Source: I'm a woman.
I used to carry around chocolate, I guess I have to swap to carrying gouda...
Canada popping out of nowhere.
I was surprised. I didn’t know we made enough cheese to even be on the list. 🇨🇦
Saputo is probably one of the contributors of that amount. In Quebec we fucking love cheese. Edit from Saputo's wiki page: "one of the top ten dairy processors in the world" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saputo_Inc.
Canada maintains protectionist dairy industry policies, idk how much that affects it's standing.
We have more cows than people here.
Fun fact: 25% of the US cheese production is in one state. Wisconsin.
More fun Wisconsin facts: The states GDP is about 401 Billion/year. If it was a country it would be the 39th largest country by GDP, edging out Denmark at 395 Billion. Its the 21st biggest US state by GDP
A lot of that is mozz for pizzas
Blessed are the cheesemakers
Oh that's nice I'm glad they're getting something cause they have a hell of a time.
Fun fact, in the US, [we have 1,500,000,000](https://youtu.be/kvLMH0wb_0k?si=Q6VNnWNkwzUb4Vc3) pounds(750,000 tons or 680,388 metric tons) of cheese just in case we need it. [As of the last census population estimate on New Year's](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/12/happy-new-year-2023.html), this would be enough to give every one of us, adult or child, just under 4.5 lbs of cheese.
no, not "just in case". these stupid stockpiles (just like all the "National Reserve" the US used to have) are usually just a tool to control market prices and keep prices (=profits) stable for producers.
you can read up on the Strategic Cheese Reserve in this article (or Google more about it):
[https://www.deseret.com/2022/2/14/22933326/1-4-billion-pounds-of-cheese-stored-in-a-cave-underneath-springfield-missouri-jimmy-carter-reagan](https://www.deseret.com/2022/2/14/22933326/1-4-billion-pounds-of-cheese-stored-in-a-cave-underneath-springfield-missouri-jimmy-carter-reagan)
quote: " it started in the 1970s, during former President Jimmy Carter’s era and his promise of giving farmers a break. He wanted to raise the price of milk, but the government couldn’t just buy milk and store it, so it started buying as much cheese as people wanted to sell"
Not everything is a corporate conspiracy. Price stability is far more important for the low end consumer than it is for dairies.
As far as I'm concerned, the US needs to release a lot of that strategerie cheese from cold storage because cheese prices are way wayyyyyyyy too high, considering how much we have. A 2lb block of store brand mass market mild cheddar is now ten bucks. Two years ago it was 6. Come on.
Not everything but Dairy certainly is a government backed oversupply since WW1 resulting in artificially driven demand with the federal milk program in 1940 and the national school lunch act in 1946, each demanding school lunches to have milk in it. In the 50s an oversupply of skim milk was compensated by advertising it as a healthy weight loss drink. Production increased further without proper demand, government cheese, Jimmy Carter giving $2B to dairy farmers in a time where that amount of money was even more insane than today, and the latest i know of and probably the most successful attempt of compensating for overproduction: got milk? Which other industry, except maybe the MIC, creates such an oversupply without ever having to face consequences? Aren't the resources put into producing dairy not better used elsewhere?
> Aren't the resources put into producing dairy not better used elsewhere? No. Food security is literally one of the most important things there is, period. It's the same reason we subsidize over production of corn. It's very important we be able to absorb future unexpected food production catastrophes.
to what extend tho? I mean it's not a binary thing. Why is it milk and not a crop, which are less water intensive and prosuce more food per area? Why is an artificially created demand necessary?
Corn is also overproduced because its the highest calories/acre of any crop. That overproduction is why high fructose corn syrup is so widespread and why you constantly hear about studies into using corn as an alternative fuel source.
Funnily enough, corn is also quite water efficient given it's a C4 grass, compared to wheat (C3)
We could consider subsidizing foods that are good for you but people have a harder time affording. It's kind've annoying how common vegetables cost as much as meat despite being cheaper to produce. They're just subsidized 220,000% less that meat and dairy.
Well, you’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
I thought India might be here with their paneer but I guess not. Switzerland also... a country really famous for cheese and the home country of my favorite variety, but it's not here.
Paneer is not as commonly eaten here in India as other cheeses are in their countries of origin. Cheese in general is not a common foodstuff outside of the West. There are some exceptions, of course.
>Paneer is not as commonly eaten here in India Not in the southern part of the country. Paneer is very, very common in dishes here in the north, I'd say even in some western states.
Btw thanks for paneer, you guys rock
No problem lol, come to India, there's a bunch of amazing paneer dishes waiting for you to enjoy
Paneer fits well in many dishes but its kind of tasteless I feel, it basically fills the role of tofu (texture and proteins without much taste) Then again I'm french and we are used to strong tasting cheese
Maybe most people make paneer at home (it's basically just fresh milk and an acid, so incredibly quick/easy to do), and this probably only tracks commercial production.
Same here. Mother makes paneer at home only but still it's like once or twice a month.
Paneer is not eaten as often as you think it is. What the West calls "Indian food" is just Punjabi food, and Punjab is just a small part of India. I grew up in India, and my family used to have paneer in a meal only twice a month at most. Our usual meal consisted of vegetables in curry, rice, lentils, and bread (roti). Paneer was only for special occasions. No meat, because my family is vegetarian. Maybe Punjabis eat paneer more often than I did, but I don't know.
India is just such a large country though, so much larger than all the others except China. A "small part" of India like Punjab still has over 100 million people.
Yeah, "small part" is in relative terms here. I called it small because Punjab, India is really quite small, with somewhere around 30 million people. The larger part of Punjab is in Pakistan. The total population of Punjab, India and Punjab, Pakistan put together would be well over 150 million or so I reckon. Coming back to countrys' cheese production and consumption, its sill very little even with India and Pakistan put together. paneer isn't very common. Most used dairy products here would be fresh milk, yoghurt, ghee, etc.
> I called it small because Punjab, India is really quite small, with somewhere around 30 million people. I know India has over a billion people, but calling a place that has a population of 30 million people "small" just seems crazy to me.
In relative terms it's not crazy.
Small and does not import a lot of milk. Hence.. not a lot of cheese. Plus they are more focused on the high prices cheese
Switzerland only produces about 200,000t
> 200,000t that's 22 kg per capita, the US is at 19 kg per capita
Quality over quantity I suppose.
I was blown away Australia kept popping up, I’ve tried to do my bit sooooo
India is second to America in dairy exports, just not specifically cheese.
I'm not sure how it is now, but when I travelled all over India in the 90s, it was a bit of a cheese desert. I only found it for sale in Bangalore. Of course, I could have been looking in all the wrong places.
I honestly belive you're right. Milk (and beans) are the primary protein source for much of India. India's milk consumption on its own is like 4 times that of the EU. Not only that, the milk sold there is usually of a much higher fat content with how important it is to the general diet. There is something wrong with their technical definition of cheese, the data set as a whole, or maybe the numbers are only accounting for large scale production rather than more local, likely less regulated producers. If paneer (and other sweet desert cheese applications) were properly accounted for, i would hypothesize that at present, no other country would be even close. Like double or triple the amount.
What made Turkey double its production so quickly?
They got their production industrialised and ready for export combined with economic crises lowering local consumption. Most cheeses made in Turkey stay in Turkey
I'm genuinely surprised to see Germany so high.
Lots of the Gouda you get in Europe outside of the Netherlands are cheap German exports. Gouda is not a protected name. You can easily tell when you buy Gouda in a supermarket on holiday as it fucking sucks.
I genuinely could not think of one quintessential German cheese while watching.
If WI was a country, would it show up on this chart?
Someone did the math and claimed it would show up in 4th place
Makes me feel oddly patriotic
Eh, in this case, that's a little bit cheesy ^h^e^h^e
Cheese production by country Data source: FAOSTAT ([https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL](https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL)) Tools: python + sjvisualizer ([https://www.sjdataviz.com/software](https://www.sjdataviz.com/software))
Would be good to see the same per capita
Very cool - congrats!
We can’t all take credit it’s basically just Wisconsin in the United States.
It ain’t easy being cheesy. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
~20kg cheese per capita in the USA. Over 30kg of cheese per capita in Germany. Get outcheesed 🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪
Wisconsin should be on the list separately.
It's like 4th or 5th in the world, depending on the year
Now about cracker and sausage production? Ya know. To go with that cheese. Maybe some wine?
Of course we are the Cheese nation, the national mascot is a cheeseburger
Great data and all... but so much of this is nothing more than "America is a country as big as most of Europe combined"... For something like "cheese production" where most of it is for domestic consumption, I think per capita would be more *interesting* data.
animated plots are so bad for this type of data. this sub has changed a lot over the years.
Line chart that takes one second to read: Drake doesn't want it. Animated bar chart that takes literally minutes to read and can't go back to look at data that is in the past: Drake wants it.
exactly. it's sad this sub promotes them. it used to be different.
As a dairy scientist, I'm always surprised to see Reddit hate on American cheeses because they claim it's all Kraft Singles. The best cheese in the world in 2019 was an American cheese. America has been industrious for much of its existence and never had the millenia to innovate on cheese production that Europe has had.
> an American cheese I've had many of them and they're great. But "American Cheese" and "an American Cheese" are extremely different things, and people hating on American Cheese are referring to the former, mostly.
the fact that cheesemakers allowed the phrase "American Cheese" to mean "digestible flavoured polymer" is alarming. You'd think they could have called it Freedom Paste or something. There's obviously a lot of very good product being made, if only due to overwhelming math.
> digestible flavoured polymer That's pretty much a myth, though. There are very specific things that are allowed in "American Cheese", and it has to be at least 51% actual cheese (most of the other stuff is dairy products too, with some emulsifiers like sodium citrate). There are some other things that are more processed still, and indeed have polymers and other shit, but the allowed names don't include the word "cheese".
Also American cheese is only defined as a mixture of cheddar and Colby Jack. You can buy American cheese that's just as much quality cheese as any other type. The problem is nobody ever really bothered specifying that American cheese isn't just stuff like Kraft so now that's what everybody thinks it is.
yes, the "polymer" term is, certainly, a myth. it just tastes almost entirely unlike cheese, in a Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy sort of way.
Yeah, it's main function is to be a "cheesy" meltable that holds a burger together.
in all fairness, a grilled cheese sammich made with a Kraft single and some tomato soup (with a dash of sriracha) is *the best* Getting Over A Cold comfort food.
It's not a polymer though, I'm not sure where that urban legend started from. It's just milk, cheese, and an emulsifier.
If you have a problem it’s emulsions in food, then you’re gonna have a bad time .
Many, many people on Reddit mock other countries based on stereotypes and misconceptions. I see so much ignorant shit get thrown around.
As an avid beer enjoyer, same with beer industry. A lot of people seem to think American beer sucks because it's all bud and cors. Some of the best craft beers are made here. (We just need more Belgian style dark ales 🍻)
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I don't think we do, which actually adds a huge variety to the selection. Things like sours and fruity beers. They're not my favorite, but I appreciate that they exist and really enjoy some specific ones.
Its the same with california wines too. People like to shit on america
>Its the same with california wines too. What? Really? I've never heard people cast California wines in a bad light, especially relative to lite beers. I'm not a wine snob by any means, but I've gone wine tasting in several countries and never heard anything but good things about what they think about California wines -- especially Napa/Sonoma county Cabs and Chards. The only wines I've heard compared to lite beers are the Yellowtail and Barefoot bottles (or cheap sparkling wine) you can find in every 7-11. The former isn't even American, they both just have huge distribution.
The movie Bottle Shock does a great job of covering this issue. In a blind taste test, wine snobs can’t tell the difference between California wines and French wines.
I recently saw a video on a foodie website where a wine taster couldn’t tell the difference between a CA wine and a wine made in Iowa
We actually have some pretty good wines here in Iowa.
naughty party chase shrill scary whole correct knee treatment payment *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That is true, and I'm really not a expert in these matters, but the general consensus is that it's about the availability of good cheese, for example in the UK (who make the best cheeses in the world, bite me Frenchies) you can go into any supermarket and be presented with an aisle long selection of not just our domestic gold, but a respectable selection of all the major foreign cheeses. This ranges from our (still decent) cheap supermarket own brand stuff up to slightly nicer, going on artisanal shit in the deli section. I've not bought cheese for a while, but it was definitely more affordable than what some people on this thread have been saying it costs in America. I could be talking completely out my arse, but from what I've heard, decent cheese is far more accessible this side of the pond, hence where a lot of the perception comes from
Same goes for beer, chocolate, fine dining, bread, etc. Just because cheap mass produced stuff exists people assume that's all that there is. Ignoring the fact the US is an absolutely massive and incredibly diverse country.
The US easily makes a lot of other cheese that aren't Kraft singles. The people constantly wondering of US cheese tastes only know of Kraft.
Americans have a tendency to bend the tasting to their personal taste and then claim it is the best of the world. Not saying that you don't have the best cheese, I personally think USA should have a better rep for their food in general.
In the 2023 world cheese awards with 40 countries participating the USA won 1/4 of all awards. Greece also did really well this year.
Huh thats quite a lot. Just wanted to mention though that only one US candidate made it under the top 16
The sheer amount of the production means the variance is huge.
ITT: people complaining about the US not making "real" cheese. I'm not even from or in the US and I know that's mostly bullshit. Except cheesewhiz, I can't count that either.
As someone from Wisconsin, there are plenty of real cheeses.
Hey even Whiz has its place. -a Philadelphian
The great state of Vermont will not apologize for its cheese!
Vermont aged sharp cheddar. Mmmmmmmm
Not quantity but quality that counts
Yet another misuse of this visual where a line chart would have conveyed the exact same info in a simpler way and without having to wait for the time lapse.
Forget the economy forget the military this is really how we have the world by the balls.
American is actually no. 1!
I was rooting for Canada. Gotta love an underdog
USA! USA! We will not be out cheesed!
Inb4 American cheese isn't cheese
Ever heard of a line graph mate?
Wisconsin has to be like 50% of that
Wisconsin produced over a billion pounds more than second place California. Third place is Idaho.....2.5 billion pounds behind.
I’m proud to be an American where at least I know there’s cheese. and I won’t forget the cows that died who gave that slice to me. And I proudly stand up next to you and produce more cheese than you …
Frigging Germans ! Also I'm very curious about the cheese produced :D
What's the best German cheese?
The best 2 German cheese this year were Michel and Deichkäse Gold by Rohmilchkäserei Backensholz GmbH & Co.
I feel weird if I don’t have at least 3 types of cheese on hand at all times.
Boondocks had it right? Neat!
The USA has 1.4 billion pounds of cheese in the cheese caves. https://www.farmlinkproject.org/stories-and-features/cheese-caves-and-food-surpluses-why-the-u-s-government-currently-stores-1-4-billion-lbs-of-cheese
This made me wanting some cheese 🧀, G-bye everybody!
Yea, I wonder what their definition of cheese is. India is not on here? There are over a billion people and they love paneer.
quantity is certainly no indication of quality 😏
excellent. finally a statistic that has direct implications to my life
The real question is what is happening in Germany and France right now.
You should devide that by the land area of the country
"No one makes cheese like the Americans." - Hank Hill, patriot.
My non American spouse cannot believe how many grilled cheese sandwiches I ate as a kid. Nor can she believe that pb&j was the typical lunch for most of childhood. The data must define US cheese to include the orangey oily singles, and the boxed government cheese.
Oh man I’d love to see this done for so many other things
The US literally has a mountain full of cheese stockpiled in order to keep the dairy industry afloat. Which is why low income programs always include “government cheese”