All About Cheese
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00This is a story about a lie that we've been told our whole lives.
00:04It's a story about marketing, economics, science, and biology.
00:08And most importantly, it's about why a lot of cheese is orange.
00:18Cheese making basically starts here.
00:20I know, it seems like we're starting a little bit early on in the process, but hang in there
00:24with me.
00:25Animals like cows, buffalo, goats, sheep, they naturally eat grass, which gives them
00:29the nutrients they need to produce milk.
00:31And that milk gets turned into cheese.
00:33That is one vascular utter, by the way.
00:36In the 12 and 1300s, sheep were often the main producers of milk.
00:39But the catch was that a sheep can turn their grass intake into either wool or milk, but
00:46not the same amount of both simultaneously.
00:49That's Paul Kinston, former president of the American Dairy Science Association and a multi-published
00:54author on the subject of cheese.
00:56Cheese, right from undergraduate work, you know, and then through graduate school became
01:02my love, my first love.
01:03And talking about love, just hold on one second.
01:11And talking about love, if you love Vox content as much as Paul loves cheese and I love French
01:16fries, then you should know about our membership program.
01:19It's the best way to support our journalism and get some exclusive perks.
01:24And pardon my eating while I explain this.
01:26I've been filming all day and haven't had a chance to have a snack.
01:30So weeks of work go into the making of every Vox video, and that goes from mother.
01:36Weeks of work go into the making of every Vox video.
01:38And that includes things like writing, scripting, animating, editing, filming, talking to experts
01:45like Paul, fact-checking everything.
01:47All of that takes a lot of time and effort, and support from our members makes all that
01:56time and effort possible.
01:57So if you want to ensure that videos like the ones that we make keep getting made on
02:02the internet, the best way that you can do that is by joining our membership program.
02:08So if that's something that speaks to you, go to vox.com slash memberships and join today.
02:13Now back to the video.
02:15Switching the milk used for cheese from this to this had a profound effect on people's
02:21perception of cheese.
02:23All because of something in the grass.
02:25Beta-carotene.
02:26Beta-carotene is a complex compound that creates color.
02:30It's what gives carrots and apricots and sweet potatoes their signature orange.
02:34Grass, when it's lush and green and in season, contains beta-carotene.
02:39When sheep process the beta-carotene in grass, it doesn't make its way into the milk.
02:43Therefore, sheep cheese is pretty much always naturally white.
02:47In the cow, it's a different metabolic pathway.
02:49Beta-carotene goes into the cow, passes into the milk, is part of the fat in milk, and
02:55then gets concentrated in the cheese.
02:58And that's what gives cow's milk cheese its yellow color.
03:01Cheese made in sort of the spring, early summer, always has been recognized as really yellow,
03:07which it is, and also higher in quality.
03:09I mean, it was always revered.
03:11Because of that, people really wanted yellow cheese.
03:14But cheesemakers, they wanted to make money.
03:17And the second change in terms of marketing that happened, that became really important,
03:22cow's milk forms cream easily.
03:25So cheesemakers figured out pretty quickly that they could skim off some cream before
03:31making cheese to make butter.
03:33Butter had a better price in the marketplace.
03:35But the problem with the cheese was, with less cream, is less beta-carotene carrying
03:42over because it's in the butter, and so it didn't look as good.
03:45Farmers were ending up with yellow butter and pale cheese.
03:48But they realized that they could scam the system by dyeing the cheese to look like it
03:53was full of that beta-carotene-filled fat.
03:56So that begins to happen in the 1400s, 1500s, and they used things like saffron or marigold
04:05or, believe it or not, carrot juice.
04:08But everything changed once these bad boys hit the market.
04:12The annatto seed.
04:13The seed comes from this shrub that grows in South America.
04:16The Dutch, who followed in the wake of the Spanish colonizers as traders, learned about
04:21annatto and they saw markets.
04:23On the 1600s, they began to export annatto from South America to Europe.
04:29Because there aren't a lot of really good colorants available, and Europe is getting
04:34very wealthy and they like colorful things.
04:36And so it didn't take long for cheesemakers to realize they could replace these expensive
04:41colorants like saffron or marigold or carrot juice, because they're not very intense.
04:48And annatto was superior, it was cheap, and cheeses then began to be either surface-applied
04:54with annatto, like the Dutch did for gouda or gouda, or it was added to the milk to make
05:00And that's why today you still get cheeses that look like this.
05:21With factory farming, cows aren't as grass-fed as they used to be.
05:25Their diets tend to include a lot more corn and soy.
05:28Because we've been used to centuries of saturated colors of cheese, none of that really matters
05:33when it comes to marketing.
05:34We still expect our cheddar to maintain a golden hue, and you can still thank annatto
05:39for that.
05:40Annatto is used all over food too, often making its way into many other cheese-adjacent snacks,
05:46all of which carry on that long orange legacy.
05:49But if you go to your local grocery store, you'll see that the cheese is varied.
05:53Take this cheddar for instance, there's the yellow-dyed cheddar that we expect, and then
05:58there's the undyed white cheddar.
06:00But if you go to your local cheesemonger, you might be able to find the perfect in-between,
06:05grass-fed cheddar cheese that's naturally tinted with beta carotene.
06:09Which one you prefer is up to your own taste and expectations.
06:14I grew up with white Vermont cheddar as a kid.
06:18I prefer raw milk cheddar, by the way.
06:20I live right down the road from a wonderful raw milk cheddar cheesemaker.
06:25My kids grew up on it.
06:26It's pricey, but boy, it's good.
06:28And it's not colored.