Processed cheese

A fruity, melted cheese on a hot toast, is a favorite breakfast for many people. Is it useful for our body to eat this gentle and soft product every day? Can it end with disappointing diagnoses?

What it is?

Cream cheese is a popular dairy product. It is made from cheese for melting, rennet cheese, cottage cheese, milk powder, butter, other dairy products with the addition of various spices and fillers (by melting). The history of the product originates in the town of Thun in Switzerland, where once they produced too much hard cheese and were forced to melt it, not being able to sell it. And the first who decided to patent his own method of producing new items was James Kraft. "Kraft Foods" - the company of this man - in 1950 began to produce the very first processed cheese.

Since then, the technology of product manufacturing has been improving from year to year - today on the shelves of supermarkets there are many different kinds of processed cheese. Depending on the production technology and the chemical composition, the cheeses are divided into:

• Sausage - they are made from low-fat varieties of cheese. To these are added various rennet cheeses, other dairy products, often cumin or pepper;
• Slices - based on rennet cheeses, fat content of which is from 50 to 70%, other dairy products. These cheeses have a characteristic, rich cheese flavor. They are splendidly cut;
• Pasty - for pasty cheeses is characterized by a bright cheese flavor and a high percentage of fat content;
• Sweet - in sweet melted cheeses, in addition to all other ingredients, add sugar and various fillers to give a peculiar taste and smell - coffee, cocoa, nuts, honey, different syrups.

Composition and useful properties

If we compare processed cheese with hard varieties, then it has some advantages. It contains less cholesterol and our body absorbs it 100%. In this nutritional product there is a huge amount of phosphorus and calcium, which "answer" for the condition of bones, nails and hair. In melted cheeses, lots of casein is a high-quality protein rich in essential amino acids.

Contraindications

All soft processed cheese contains a huge amount of unnecessary phosphate and chemical food additives and harmful salts. They can cause allergic reactions: most often this is reddening of the skin. In addition, phosphates are dangerous for people suffering from kidney disease. They also harm bones - with an overabundance of phosphates in the body they become brittle and break easily.

Do not get carried away with melted cheese and people with various diseases of the cardiovascular system, because it contains a lot of sodium. Because of the citric acid, which is added to the cheese in order to speed up the process of its maturation, it is an undesirable food for people with high acidity of the stomach.

Generally popular with consumers, processed cheeses usually have a rather low quality. Manufacturers, seeking to save, offer buyers surrogate analogues at a low price and with the appropriate quality. These cheeses, as a rule, make from recyclable materials - substandard rennet cheese, dairy products and cheese mass with expiring shelf life. However, after melting, a nutritious product is obtained. Much worse if the manufacturer uses vegetable (raposovoy, palm, etc.) oil instead of creamy. This is a dubious product, not processed cheese.

Another important point: you should not choose cheese fused in plastic packaging, at the bottom of which there are letters PS - this means that the packaging is made of polystyrene. In most European countries, storage of products in this material is already prohibited. Processed cheese should be in a package of polypropylene, at the bottom should be the letters PP.