“The government’s trying to control my mind? With cheese?!”
*Eyeroll.*
I saw this comment on an anti-cheese post today. About five years ago, I’d have been right there with the best of these people, double fisting pitchforks – one to stab cheese slanderers with, and one to stab the nearest block of Gouda and eat it whole. Even when I finally quit cheese, it wasn’t for any of those anti-establishment keyword reasons you’d think of. Not health. Not consumerism. It was to undergo the same “Death Becomes Her” style age reversal my known-them-my-whole-lives suddenly vegan friends were experiencing with everything from their skin to their hair. I had to have it.
And normally I’m really committed when a plan’s motivation is vanity.
So why was cheese so different?
Well, it has trace amounts of morphine (the addictive painkiller) in it. No, your government didn’t put drugs in your food. Yes, Mother Nature did. Why? Because milk (where cheese comes from) is meant for cows. The casein in that milk is what has the opiate-like effect on nursing calves, so they wanna load up on the stuff and grow strong (which must suck when their suckle dealer-mom runs dry). And condensed, druggy-casein is basically what cheese is. (Or as Wikipedia puts it: “Cheese forms by coagulation of the milk protein casein”) So, voila. The mozzarella collection in your fridge is just a stash of milk’s most morphine-ated parts.
Okay, fine. So it’s a delicious step down from scheduled pills.
What’s the government and food industry got to do with it?
Since corporations have all the money, they kinda run the show. And since the food industry’s a big part of making the show run smoothly, the object is always going to be to make as much money as possible for all parties of power involved – not your health or well-being. That’s why making cheese so popular was a game changer – because the stuff’s made from a byproduct of milk. And while milk’s always got a market – now its leftovers could be made into something you can sell. But how? The same way anything does: marketing. You can squoosh it between sandwich bread, nuke it onto other stuff, eat it plain, have it with some wine, deep fry and bread it and call a “mozzarella stick”, put some on your dog’s snout and see how quickly he can get it off and into his mouth … Yes, the greasey sea of cheesey possibilities is endless. And, admittedly, they did a fantastic job of marketing it when I was a kid. I literally remember either side of my transition as I was indoctrinated into the Kraft cult – going from hating the nasty and pointless stuff to becoming the fellatious “Friday” junkie about it.
And could you blame me? My entertainment was commercial. And vice versa.
Look at what I was watching:
These bastards were smart.
Even our fave hangout had the name in it.
(Note the mascot’s Uncle Sam point reinforcing how “American” cheesey pizza is. #subliminal)
Plus that Titanic boy (back when he was still just a boy in my Tiger Beat teen heartthrob magazine) ate it:
“What am I gonna put between here, mom? Kale? Tofu? I might as well kill myself…”
And, let’s not forget our green pals:
I’m pretty sure “Dominoes” even shows up multiple times in the version of “Turtles” I used to watch. (And I miss the horrible stuff just thinking about those scenes.) Get everyone to make this switch, and, voila. No great conspiracy with rotating spirals. No mind hypnosis. No need. Just a jedi mind trick of marketing with savory morphine to prize your money from you.
Because if you can profit off the run off of something already marketable, that’s great.
But when that run off’s addictive?
You, my friend, have found the fondu filled jackpot teat on your cash cow.