Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It’s not mold, it’s calcium lactate (2018)

thephcheese.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 236 posts

Re: It’s not mold, it’s calcium lactate (2018)

#141

Post by tshaddox »

foxyv wrote: post #131
xattt wrote: post #10

Tangential, but I recently noticed that natamycin, an antifungal agent, is being used in packages of shredded cheese as a preservative. I was a little taken aback on seeing it, given that antibiotic stewardship has been pushed so much in the last decade. I realize that natamycin is an antifungal and not an antibiotic, and that mechanisms of developing resistance are likely different between eukaryotes and prokaryotes…

I stopped buying pre-shredded cheese a decade ago. Block cheese is cheaper, lasts longer, and cooks better. Pre-shredded is just worse in every way aside from convenience. Using a cheap rotary grater like they have in restaurants makes this almost a non-issue.

Isn't the convenient version of something always worse in every way aside from convenience than the less convenient version of the same thing?

Re: It’s not mold, it’s calcium lactate (2018)

#142

Post by josephg »

m463 wrote: post #135
foxyv wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped buying pre-shredded cheese a decade ago. Block cheese is cheaper, lasts longer, and cooks better. Pre-shredded is just worse in every way aside from convenience. Using a cheap rotary grater like they have in restaurants makes this almost a non-issue.

anything shelf-stable, hydrogenated peanut butter, highly processed milk, etc I'm starting to wonder if convenience = 1/healthy hopefully not bananas though.

My partner read a book on food recently. They made an obvious point I’d never thought of before: Food is eaten in our stomachs by bacteria. If the bacteria in our stomachs can’t (or won’t) eat something, that means it’s not digestible. That means it’s not food.

If something is shelf stable, that’s because the bacteria can’t or won’t eat it. If bacteria doesn’t want to eat something, it’s not food. And you probably don’t want it in your stomach.

Some things are shelf stable by physically keeping the bacteria out of it (eg canned food). That seems fine. But how do they make shelf stable cheesy / creamy products? Bacteria loves cheese. They do it with weird additives and substitutes that - by design - bacteria hates. But that also means our bodies can’t really eat it either - since we use the same bacteria in our stomach to digest things.

Plenty of healthy things are convenient. Like, apples! But healthy food is rarely shelf stable. Almost by definition.

Re: It’s not mold, it’s calcium lactate (2018)

#143

Post by whyenot »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #33
0_____0 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangent on tangent - in addition to the antifungal there is also anticaking agent (nothing crazy, often some type of flour) that noticeably changes the mouthfeel of cheeses that come pre-shredded. If you notice a grainy texture in your food, try grating it off a brick instead!

it's wood pulp. sawdust derivative. aka cellulose. don't buy pre-shredded cheese unless you like replacing up to 10% of your cheese with essentially sawdust at a premium. https://www.eater.com/2016/3/3/11153876/cheese-wood-pulp-cel...

Cellulose is not "wood pulp" or "sawdust." Only about 50% of sawdust is cellulose. The rest is hemicellulose, lignin, resins, and oils. Any plant material that you eat contains cellulose. It's just about the most benign thing you could add to food as an anti-caking agent. ...not matter what the eater.com article with the attention grabbing headline that you linked to might say.

Re: It’s not mold, it’s calcium lactate (2018)

#144

Post by Animats »

foxyv wrote: post #131
xattt wrote: post #10

Tangential, but I recently noticed that natamycin, an antifungal agent, is being used in packages of shredded cheese as a preservative. I was a little taken aback on seeing it, given that antibiotic stewardship has been pushed so much in the last decade. I realize that natamycin is an antifungal and not an antibiotic, and that mechanisms of developing resistance are likely different between eukaryotes and prokaryotes…

I stopped buying pre-shredded cheese a decade ago. Block cheese is cheaper, lasts longer, and cooks better. Pre-shredded is just worse in every way aside from convenience. Using a cheap rotary grater like they have in restaurants makes this almost a non-issue.

> Block cheese is cheaper, lasts longer, and cooks better.

Is this a promotion for the National Cheese Stockpile?[1] The US has about 1.5 billion pounds of cheese in storage in a cave in Missouri. Really. There's a USDA welfare program for dairy farmers, and they have to put the excess milk somewhere. So it's made into cheese and stored.

[1] https://modernfarmer.com/2022/05/cheese-caves-missouri/

Re: It’s not mold, it’s calcium lactate (2018)

#145

Post by brundolf »

talkingtab wrote: post #75

It seems wrong to me that most of what people now call cheese is not at all like what I think of as "real cheese". I have ended up making cheese and it is both fascinating, productive and tasty. While there are many "recipes" for cheeses, they are mainly focused on preparing the cheese for aging. These are often techniques, like washing the curd (gouda) or cheddaring (cheddar). The aging part takes more work. I conve…

Until early adulthood the only cheese I really knew was kraft slices, kraft parmesan powder, bags of pre-shredded, etc. Literally buying cheese by the block turned my world upside down

Re: It’s not mold, it’s calcium lactate (2018)

#146

Post by twojacobtwo »

tshaddox wrote: post #141
foxyv wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped buying pre-shredded cheese a decade ago. Block cheese is cheaper, lasts longer, and cooks better. Pre-shredded is just worse in every way aside from convenience. Using a cheap rotary grater like they have in restaurants makes this almost a non-issue.

Isn't the convenient version of something always worse in every way aside from convenience than the less convenient version of the same thing?

Definitely not "always" and "in every way".

Random example. I buy a meal made by a professional chef and have it delivered. It's more convenient and it's a much better meal than I could make. It's more expensive, sure, but that's not 'in every way'

Re: It’s not mold, it’s calcium lactate (2018)

#147

Post by tabular »

josephg wrote: post #142
m463 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

anything shelf-stable, hydrogenated peanut butter, highly processed milk, etc I'm starting to wonder if convenience = 1/healthy hopefully not bananas though.

My partner read a book on food recently. They made an obvious point I’d never thought of before: Food is eaten in our stomachs by bacteria. If the bacteria in our stomachs can’t (or won’t) eat something, that means it’s not digestible. That means it’s not food. If something is shelf stable, that’s because the bacteria can’t or won’t eat it. If bacteria doesn’t want to eat something, it’s not food. And you probably do…

That sounds like an extremely pseudo-scientific book. For the real explanation, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_activity

Re: It’s not mold, it’s calcium lactate (2018)

#148

Post by whyenot »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #43
happyopossum wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) Sometimes it's cellulose - corn starch and other anti-caking agents are also used B) it's legally limited to 4%, not 10%

That's fine to say it is so on paper however the legal limit is not respected with several common household brands testing at 8-9% in last results I can find. They're incentivized to pad the product with anti caking agents to reduce cost, and it is essentially unenforced. Expect this to worsen as FDA is undergoing planned dismantlement.

Please provide a link to back this up. The Eater.com article you linked to elsewhere is from 2016 and refers to a specific enforcement action where a company plead guilty to food adulteration for adding excessive cellulose to parmesan cheese. Not a great example of something being "essentially unenforced."

Re: It’s not mold, it’s calcium lactate (2018)

#149

Post by celeritascelery »

josephg wrote: post #142
m463 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

anything shelf-stable, hydrogenated peanut butter, highly processed milk, etc I'm starting to wonder if convenience = 1/healthy hopefully not bananas though.

My partner read a book on food recently. They made an obvious point I’d never thought of before: Food is eaten in our stomachs by bacteria. If the bacteria in our stomachs can’t (or won’t) eat something, that means it’s not digestible. That means it’s not food. If something is shelf stable, that’s because the bacteria can’t or won’t eat it. If bacteria doesn’t want to eat something, it’s not food. And you probably do…

I am not very well read on this topic, but it seems like there are other ways to make shelf stable food that doesn’t necessarily make it harder to digest. For example high salt or sugar contents, or removing most of the water. These make it harder for bacteria in the environment but don’t pose a barrier when mixed up in your gut.

Granted, you can’t do that with shredded cheese. which is why it has to be refrigerated and will eventually go bad.

Re: It’s not mold, it’s calcium lactate (2018)

#150

Post by Xylakant »

josephg wrote: post #142
m463 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

anything shelf-stable, hydrogenated peanut butter, highly processed milk, etc I'm starting to wonder if convenience = 1/healthy hopefully not bananas though.

My partner read a book on food recently. They made an obvious point I’d never thought of before: Food is eaten in our stomachs by bacteria. If the bacteria in our stomachs can’t (or won’t) eat something, that means it’s not digestible. That means it’s not food. If something is shelf stable, that’s because the bacteria can’t or won’t eat it. If bacteria doesn’t want to eat something, it’s not food. And you probably do…

But that's not really true. Humans have for thousands of years tried and succeeded to make food not palatable to bacteria. Drying stuff is comparatively simple, but salting, smoking it, by either adding acid or fermenting (which makes the bacteria produce the acid that inhibits them), by adding alcohol (or again, letting the bacteria produce the alcohol), by introducing organisms that produce bactericides - namely fungi (cheese mold) that produce antibiotics. By adding sugar. Honey is shelf stable beyond your wildest dream. There's a lot of ways to get things shelf stable that use natural ingredients only and are - at least in reasonable amounts - perfectly safe to eat.

Your body will do a lot of work on food before it is in the end absorbed. It adds enzymes that break up molecular bonds. It will use acid on it. You will mash it with physical energy. It will be watered down and mixed and in the end, the molecules will be absorbed by your body.

That doesn't mean that you should eat just about everything, that's not true. But I believe making the connection via "bacteria won't eat that, it's not good" doesn't make a good point.

Post reply on HN