The Real Reason American Cheese Is Dying

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American cheese is dead. Millenials killed it.

Some version of that sentiment has been circulating across social and traditional media outlets recently. But even if you're suspicious of Twitter and the press, the data is clear: American cheese is going the way of comb headbands and Crystal Pepsi.

As Bloomberg points out, U.S. sales of American and other processed cheeses are expected to fall 1.6 percent this year, continuing a four-year slump in processed cheese sales. At American supermarkets, processed American cheese prices have dipped below $4 per pound for the first time since 2011. Meanwhile, at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the cheddar typically used to make American cheese is selling at a historical low.

American cheese, a high-fat, high-sodium, highly meltable blend of cheese and emulsifying agents, hit its heyday in the 1930s, when over 40 percent of the cheese consumed was American cheese made by Kraft. Over recent years, national tastes have turned away from synthetic, mass-manufactured cheese products to artisanal cheese makers, with millennials leading the way, sources say.

It's easy to point to hoity-toity, health-conscious, millennials — who get blamed for killing everything from breakfast cereal to golf — as the culprits behind the collapse of the iconic American cheese. But we've cut a little deeper to find the real reason American cheese is dying. Here's what we've sliced up.

So what is American cheese made of, if not pure cheese? 

Ingredients may vary widely from brand to brand, of course, and depending on whether the item falls into the pasteurized process cheese/cheese food/ cheese product label. Cheeses labelled as "cheese product" tend to pack in something called milk protein concentrate or MPC, as Serious Eats reports. MPC is a powdery substance made of milk that's been stripped of fats, liquids, and minerals. The controversial ingredient is much cheaper than milk or cheese, and not a legally allowed diary ingredient for pasteurized process cheese food or spread.

Back in 2003, the FDA caught Kraft using MPC in the production of products previously labelled as "pasteurized process cheese food" during an inspection of their facilities. The FDA sent Kraft a cease and desist letter demanding that the company stop misbranding its American cheese as "food" because its use of milk protein concentrate "does not conform to the definition and standard."

Rather than lose money by switching to real ingredients, Kraft started calling its singles "pasteurized prepared cheese product," a category of product undefined FDA regulations and unhindered by ingredient restrictions. And competitor brands followed suit.

Beyond MPC, most American cheeses are packed with paragraphs of other ingredients that aren't milk or cheese. Grab a pack of American cheese and try pronouncing all of the ingredients on the back. Good luck with "apocarotenal" and "natamycin." 

Since many Americans now live by the "Can't say it, don't eat it," mantra, the ingredients in American cheese may be a big reason for it's downfall.

Why are millennials so determined to assassinate American cheese? It could be a defense mechanism. They want to kill American cheese before it can kill us.

All the excess sodium in American cheese and other processed foods is killing us by the millions, according to research presented by the American Heart Association in 2013. Their findings were was based on a 2010 Global Burden of Diseases study, which analyzed international adult sodium intake from 1990 to 2010. The study found that excessive sodium consumption contributed to 2.3 million deaths around the world in the form of heart attacks, strokes, and other cardiovascular diseases. The study defined excessive sodium intake as more than 1,000 milligrams per day.

Currently, Americans eat a daily average of 3,400 milligrams of sodium. And where does more than 65 percent of that sodium come from? Not, as you might have thought, from the salt shaker — it's from processed foods like American cheese.

To give you some perspective: a single slice of Kraft cheese carries around 10 percent of your daily recommended sodium intake. Throw a slice on top of a burger with a tablespoon of ketchup (+167 milligrams), mustard  (+168 milligrams), and mayonnaise (+105 milligrams), and you're looking at 1,000 milligrams of sodium packed into one meal.

When it comes to proteins with a high-carbon footprint, cheese is among the worst of them — right behind beef and lamb. Cheese gobbles up a high amount of resources because raising an animal that bears milk produces a lot of greenhouse gases. Because of the high quantities of methane emitted by dairy cows, these beasts have a global warming impact that is 25 times higher than carbon.

Many kinds of cheeses — not just American — can take a toll on the environment. But cheeses produced locally tend to be more environmentally friendly, especially ones that are crafted through sustainable, organic methods. Similarly, lower fat cheeses tend to have a smaller carbon footprint, in addition to being friendlier to your waistline. And the less processing cheese undergoes, the less resources it consumes.

In terms of green cheeses, your best bets are goat cheese, brie, and Camembert, as dairy researcher Steve Zeng explained in an interview with Slate. Highly processed American cheeses don't qualify.

Sure, there are a lot of things that aren't American that aren't dying. Peruvian food. Kangaroos. Shakira.

But calling American cheese "American" is a goshdarn lie — or at the very least, not quite the whole truth–depending on who you ask.

The story of not-so-American cheese begins not on U.S. soil, but in the mountains of Switzerland. It was 1911, and Swiss cheesemen Walter Gerber and Fritz Stettler were determined to create a cheese with a long lifespan that could resist melting when shipped to tropical climates. The two cheeseheads discovered adding in sodium citrate would allow cheese to melt at low temperatures without losing fat.

About five years later, an American cheese distributor named James L. Kraft nabbed an American patent for this process for manufacturing cheese. Kraft announced he'd discovered a way to keep cheddar cheese "indefinitely without spoiling, under conditions which would ordinarily cause it to spoil." Though cheese snobs initially dismissed the strange product as "embalmed cheese," it's long shelf-life and shippability made Kraft cheese an instant, massive success.

Since millennials have been known for embracing local foods, is it any surprise they're ditching a food hat isn't even truly American?

We've used the term "American cheese" pretty liberally to apply to the processed, plasticky Kraft singles and competitors. But if we were to extend the phrase to include all the cheese that is being currently made in America, it would be a different story.

Right now, there are hundreds of local dairy farms based in the U.S. combining traditional European techniques with modern cheese innovations to come up with some truly unreal quesos. Some of our favorites include:

• Cowgirl Creamery. Based on the coast of California, Cowgirl Creamery folds fresh, organic ingredients into award-winning cheeses. Try their organic Mt Tam, a triple-cream aged cheese with notes of white mushroom and cultured butter.

• Vermont Shepherd. Based in one of the oldest sheep farms in the state, Vermont Shepherd offers seasonal products from the milk of their very own sheep. The family-run creamery produces cheeses in small, 10- to 30-wheel batches.

• Nettle Meadow Farm. The New Jersey-based farm makes semi-aged, chevre, fromage blanc, and fromage frais cheeses from their own goats and sheep. The animals are humanely raised on a diet of hay, grains, wild herbs, garlic, and raspberry leaf.

In the end, there is only so much cheese we can eat in one lifetime. With so many exquisite varieties to try, why would you waste your fridge space on Kraft Singles? (Just kidding, we know you don't need to refrigerate that stuff.)