Do not eat the orange cheese

The problem with orange cheese isn’t so much in its orangeness. Orange is in fact one of my favorite colors, the brighter the better. The problem is that mass producers use the quality of orangeness to cover up for an overall lack of actual quality.

The research bears this out. Food coloring is marketing, not flavoring, not preservative and not necessary; appearance is everything and perception is reality. The overwhelming speculative history says that orangeness came to be in cheese quite by accident and as a result of bovine diet, with some variation for seasonality. In the days when people just made a product and then put it out there for consumption this was not of a major concern. But with the advent of mass transit and mass commerce it becomes a factor and suddenly the world is a wash with “me-too” orange tinted cheeses that taste like nothing more than sub-par dairy coagulant.

The fact is orangeness in cheese today is all about orange and not cheese. It’s orange because its made that way, because someone in the marketing department felt it should be; not because of some natural chemical reaction of cow, grass and farmer. In fact the likelihood of actual orange cheeses ever being available is highly unlikely. The original real orangeness was due to beta-carotene levels in the milk, which got there from the grass that cows ate. Note cows ate grass. That’s another tragedy. For some reason cows don’t eat grass anymore. Now we feed them corn and other ground up cows. I’m not sure why that is but I imagine that is got something to do with why they use a synthetic white compound in TV ads instead of real milk. Reality is perception but just what the heck are we all perceiving?

It’s all further proof that bad ideas gain traction just as well as good ones. And bad ideas need to be called out and berated for what they are. It’s a bad idea to make cheese orange. It’s also a bad idea to market a substance that is so corrosive in its pure form that it can melt pavement, especially when your major market is kids. I call that disgusting and immoral. You might call it cola. I’m not willing to call it just a difference of opinion.

Take cigarettes for example. Smoking is not a life style “choice.” It’s a dumb idea that is followed up with a narcotic like addiction and further punished with emphysema, lung cancer and other not-good stuff. This seem like it should be obvious. Most people who die in a fire die from smoke, not fire. But lots of people still smoke. Have they been fooled or are they just fools. One can never tell.

Purveyance of orange cheese may not be on the same scale as pushing dope on babies, but it is a slippery slope. Acceptance of such basic unrealities leads directly to the issuances of new even more ridiculous concepts. Like for instance transforming countries that were once ruled by arrogant and brutal dictators, who were themselves proceeded by various oppressive monarchies and occasional chaos, into modern beacons of uncorrupted democracy by way of superior firepower.

Bad ideas are bad ideas. Do not eat the orange cheese.