The great deception of industrial grated cheese packages

We want to eat cheese when we buy a package of grated cheese, but if we don't look carefully at the label, we might be eating starch, milk proteins, melting salts, vegetable fats, flavorings, and water. These are all the ingredients that appear on the label of some industrial packages of grated cheese, some of which might not have a drop of cheese, because "they replace it with vegetable fats, starch, and flavorings," says dietitian-nutritionist Anna Grífols.

If we want to eat cheese when we buy a package of grated cheese, the label should be short and focus on the word cheese, which should appear literally and in the first position. Then we can believe that the percentage of real cheese will be high. If not, we know that they can sell us substitutes, in which there is directly no cheese at all. Or there are others in which the cheese content varies from 40% to 70%, which often happens in products labeled as "special for gratinating". "In this case, they are previously melted cheeses, which is why the cheese percentage decreases," and this is because they add a whole other series of ingredients, such as water and starches, which "improve their texture and melting", points out Grífols.

Rejected cheeses to which they give a second life

These two types of grated cheese packages coexist with the best of all, the one in which the mixtures of real cheeses, which are usually international, such as emmental, cheddar or gouda, are 90% or 100%. “These packages contain a small percentage of anti-caking agents, which are there to prevent the cheese from sticking together”, but the rest is cheese. Hence the advice is to check that the list of ingredients on the package can be counted on the fingers of one hand and that it is centered on the word cheese.

To contrast all this information, I turn to the Panel of Sensory Analysis of Artisan Cheeses of Catalonia Association. I speak with the president, Antoni Chueca, and he tells me that the industry starts from discarded cheeses, which have gone old or have not been used for sale, to chop them and then add all kinds of preservatives because the packages will be vacuum-sealed. “That cheese, vacuum-sealed, will not dry out,” he says, nor will it mold, and it will arrive at our homes with a color that may make us think it has just been grated. The curious thing about it all is that the producers, like Chueca himself, who makes Bauma cheeses, explain that to make a cheese you need very few ingredients (milk, lactic ferment, rennet, and salt), while the package of grated cheese turns out to have up to double or more, and most of them are preservatives and added flavorings that the cheesemaker never initially added.

There is still another curiosity or, let's say it well, another absurdity: if we want to eat grated cheese to put it on top of the macaroni, pizza or cannelloni we have cooked, we take a piece of Catalan cheese, a grater (surely we all have one) and grate it to our liking. It will take us the same seconds as it would take to open a package that the industry wants us to believe is grated cheese.

Finally, if you want it to be one of those cheeses that melt well at high temperature to grate over macaroni, pizza or cannelloni in the oven, take note of these, which are just some of the many made in our country: Ferrer de Cal Músic, Saüll de la Xiquella, Castellot de Mas d’Eroles, Set de Mas Marcè or Baldat de la Balda. There are many more. Buy them, grate them, keep them wrapped in kitchen paper in a cheese keeper, at controlled temperature, and use them whenever you need them. You will be eating real cheese..