There is no doubting that Kraft cheese singles may be the absolute perfect food, especially if you are a kid growing up. In fact, it may even be safe to say that everybody loves Kraft cheese singles. You will probably only meet three people in your entire life that can honestly say that their parents never made them a grilled cheese sandwich or ham & cheese sandwich that used Kraft singles in it. And if you do meet these people, run, don’t walk away.
The fact of the matter is, Kraft cheese singles are simply a childhood staple that everyone knows and loves. With that being said, these Kraft singles that you have come to know and love may actually not be as healthy for you as your originally thought they were. In fact, they may actually be much worse than you would have ever thought.
When it comes to Kraft cheese singles, something seriously stinks (as though someone just cut the cheese), and here is exactly why.
Kraft Cheese Singles Are Not Natural
When you actually look at a Kraft cheese slice, upon first glance, it does actually look like cheese. However, when you actually look at the slice, you know that something is not right, as the color is definitely going to be a little off. On top of that, Kraft singles all have a weird consistency that is just plain odd. It doesn’t feel like cheese, doesn’t taste like regular cheese, and it even doesn’t really act like regular cheese will most of the time. And what makes matters even worse, is the fact that the Kraft company will do everything in their power and use every single trick in the book to make you think that this particular product does not make any type of false claim about their product being natural. But at the same time, they use all of these same tricks to try and fool you into thinking that these same exact singles are actually an all-natural food.
A good example of this happened back in February of 2014. This is when the Kraft company launched a certain campaign that claimed they had gotten rid of all the artificial preservatives in every single one of their cheese slices. However, all that really happened was that they simply stopped using one preservative that they used, replacing it with another preservative that was considered to be a natural one, such as natamycin. Which if you can name the plant that natamycin comes from, well you can’t as it is not a natural ingredient. On top of that, they changed the wording of their ingredients from artificial preservatives to ‘proprietary unknown ingredient’, which can basically be anything from sand to automobile gas or anything in between.
Kraft Cheese Singles Don’t Actually Contain Any Cheese
The statement that Kraft cheese singles do not actually contain any kind of cheese is not just an opinion, but an actual fact. According the some of the rules that were put into place by the protectors of everything we eat, the FDA, Kraft is not even able to reference the word cheese in any way, shape or form when it comes to their Kraft singles. In order to be able to claim that a food is actually a cheese, by the FDA, that particular food item is going to have to contain a minimum of 51% of real cheese. What this means is that in order to claim to be an actual cheese product, that particular product actually has to be made up of at least over half real cheese.
However, the way that Kraft singles are able to sidestep this particular rule is to not claim that their singles do in fact have real cheese in them, but rather state that they are a ‘Pasteurized prepared cheese product’. Does that sound like any type of cheese that you have ever eaten before? This is just another way that the Kraft company is able to claim that their cheese singles are actually a ‘cheese’, but without stating that there is not actually any cheese in them.
The Singles Ingredient List Sounds Just Like A Science Experiment
Cheese is one of those ingredients that should only actually have one ingredient in it, that particular ingredient being cheese. It makes sense right, cheese being the only ingredient in cheese, maybe with milk making an appearance.
However, when it comes to Kraft’s cheese singles, there is actually quite an ingredient list, and you guessed it, only one of them is actually cheese. There is, however, a total of 17 other ingredients that are used in the making of Kraft cheese singles. Yes, you heard that right, a total of 17 ingredients in each and every Kraft cheese single, just not a whole lot of cheese.
In fact, the ingredients list for Kraft singles is composed of:
- Cheddar cheese
- Whey
- Water
- Protein concentrate
- Milk
- Sodium citrate
- Calcium phosphate
- Milkfat
- Gelatin
- Salt
- Sodium phosphate
- Lactic acid (that is used as a preservative)
- Annatto
- Paprika extract (which is used to help with its color)
- Enzymes
- Vitamin A palmitate
- Cheese culture
- Vitamin D3
There is a good chance that most people would agree that all of these ingredients mean that actual cheese, which is made of just dairy, is not actually what makes Kraft singles. This list of ingredients is, however, something that most would love to see in their child’s science contest at school.
Kraft Cheese Singles Are Simply Misleading
Not only do Kraft cheese singles pretend to be a real cheese, but they have actually just been awarded the option to add a special label to their packaging that states, “Kids Eat Right”. What makes this even worse, is the fact that this was allowed to be done by The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. While this may not sound like that big of a problem, it is because the new label for Kraft cheese singles (which don’t really contain any real cheese at all), imply that they are actually a healthy choice that kids love, and that they are also a healthy options for them to eat.
While you can try to figure out why or how this was allowed to happen, you must keep in mind that the dairy industry was also one of the leading financial contributors to the food pyramid, which stated that you should eat a minimum of 4-6 servings of dairy each and every day. But studies have shown that consuming that much dairy is actually bad for your health and is not advised to do. While you can make your own conclusions, it is just interesting to know that the people who are telling you what you should be eating every day, actually own what they are telling you to eat. Just saying.
Kraft Singles Are Created To Be Preserved, As Well As Factory Made
While the entire idea of having access to single slices of real cheese is something that simply sounds amazing, this particular situation is not as awesome as you may think it is. Basically, Kraft singles are comparable to twinkies, as they are pretty much the only food on the entire planet that has been designed to never expire, even in the case of an atomic fallout.
Yes, these Kraft singles look like the perfect slice of cheese, which was the exact reason that people even started to purchase them in the first place. They were awesome because you didn’t have to worry about these ‘cheese’ singles curling, each and every slice was the exact same thickness, and they would never get hard, no matter how much time would pass. But at the very same time, that is all because these ‘cheese’ singles, were not actually cheese at all.
Kraft cheese singles were lucky in the sense that when they were introduced right after World War II, most of the production of food had been industrialized. This means that the people at the time, had an extremely high regard for any food that actually came from a factory, cheese included. This was a time when being ‘standardized’ meant that it was automatically a higher-quality item. Yet, these particular cheese singles were never a quality product back then, and they still aren’t now.
In fact, nowadays, people have been educated to know better than that. Nowadays you eat clean, you detox, you avoid any kind of processed foods at all costs, and you do whatever you can to stay away from an ingredient list that takes longer than 30 seconds to read. At the end of the day, you are able to make your own decisions and eat whatever it is that you would like to eat. However, if you have any concern for your own personal health, you will do everything in your power to eat the foods that are simple and only have one ingredient in their list of ingredients. In this particular example, cheese should be the only ingredient in your cheese, and you should do your best to only eat that variety of it.
