About Cheese

No one really knows when humans first started to consume cheese, but legend links its discovery to an anonymous shepherd who decided to carry milk in a bag made from a sheep’s stomach. The bag was warmed by the sun, and the natural rennin enzyme in the stomach lining acted on the milk, turning it from a liquid to a semi-solid. To the shepherd’s surprise, the resulting mass was quite palatable. It probably did not take long after that for people to realize how useful this natural process would be in providing an edible food that could be transported

Cheese is a preserved food made from the curd, or solid portion, of milk. Adding certain enzymes and/or acid to any type of milk causes the casein proteins and fat to coagulate and separate from the liquid portion, or whey. Making cheese involves removing moisture from the curd to varying degrees after the whey is drained. The curd can then be treated in a variety of ways to produce over 2,000 varieties of cheese. The whey also contains dissolved materials such as proteins, which can be processed to produce cheese and other foods.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration states that cheese must be “a product made from curd obtained from the whole, partly fat-free/nonfat, or fat-free/nonfat milk of cows, or from milk of other animals, with or without added cream, by coagulating with rennin, lactic acid, or other suitable enzyme or acid, and with or without further treatment of the separated curd by heat or pressure, or by means of ripening ferments, special molds, or seasoning”. This definition serves as the foundation for many different cheese varieties but fifteen varieties now account for most of the cheese consumed today.