Things I’ve learned as an American expat in the UKoGBaNI #23

Cheese colors

The natural color of cheddar cheese is white, not yellow or orange or yellow-orange.

Britons are huge cheddar cheese lovers. Various varieties of cheddar cheese take up 90 percent of supermarket shelves. And you know what? All of the cheddar cheese is white in color. In the States, cheddar cheese is this weird orangy-yellow color, sort of like the color of Cheetos.

Given I worked in a supermarket deli for many years, I knew white cheddar cheese existed but I always associated white cheddar cheese with rich and/or fancy people who chose to buy blocks of cheese from the specialty cheese case instead of ordering cheese from the deli counter. In reality, those people were buying natural cheddar cheese and the rest of us were buying cheddar cheese that had been colored by way of some chemical.

Think about it – cows don’t produce orangy-yellow milk!

And as I was skipping through the supermarket today, I saw the cheese below, advertised as a new product on offer. Note how the packaging clearly points out that the cheese has been artificially colored.

For the next learning in my Expat Learnings mini series, go here. Alternatively, go here to read this mini-series from the beginning.