But cutting around the mold on cheese is fine, right? Right???
Just eat American cheese. That doesn’t mold cause it’s plastic.
American Cheese is a processed mix of cheeses like Colby and Cheddar, and is great.
Kraft American “Cheese Product” is the square sliced “plastic” one people think of.
Kraft American Singles is normal american cheese. All american cheese is “cheese product” because its solidified cheese sauce, not a cheese itself.
Let me put it this way: when I get american cheese at my local deli (I like the white) it is delicious and much like eating any other deli cheese. When I get Kraft slices, they are like eating solidified vegetable oil, with weird bubbles and texture, individually wrapped in plastic. Theres a difference.
You’re getting the labels mixed up.
As a labeling requirement under U.S. law, anything labeled “American Cheese” must be pasteurized process cheese made from some combination of cheddar, colby, washed curd cheese, or granular cheese, which the law also defines pretty strictly. It must be made from these cheeses, heated and emulsified with an emulsifying salt (usually sodium citrate).
American cheese is allowed to have some optional ingredients and still be labeled American Cheese:
- Food safe acid (as long as pH stays above 5.3)
- Cream or milkfat, such that this added fat can account for up to 5% of the weight of the finished product.
- Water (but the total moisture content of the resulting product must still be within the other limits in the regulation)
- Salt
- Artificial coloring
- Spices or flavoring that do not simulate the flavors of cheeses
- Mold inhibitors from sorbate up to 0.2%, or from proprionate up to 0.3%
- Lechitin, if sold in slices
You can add milk, cream, buttermilk, whey, or certain other dairy products up to 49% of the finished product, but then you’d have to call it “Pasteurized American Process Cheese Food” instead of just American Cheese.
American cheese is made from almost entirely cheese ingredients. The individual slices being sold at the store, though, vary by brand on whether they’re even trying to be American Cheese (or whether they’re some kind of lesser “cheese food” or even lesser “cheese spread” or even lesser “cheese product”)
Regular Kraft singles aren’t American Cheese. Look at the label. They’re “cheese product.” Even the Deli Deluxe line has taken a hit in quality in recent years, even if they are labeled Cheese.
Go with other brands that actually put together a decent tasting American Cheese, and check the label to make sure it’s made with 100% cheese instead of 51% cheese (or less).
So I can’t actually find anything from a quick search that tells me what “bread poisoning” is. Searches show results for both moldy bread as well as ergotism. Just about every source on the Internet tells me that eating a bunch of moldy bread should just give you a bad case of shits or vomits. But if someone is immunocompromised or has gut issues it could be worse.
But if this was ergot poisoning that’s different and doesn’t have much to do with ordinary bread mold.
There are some highly toxic species of mold, although they are much rarer than ordinary mold.
