The United States of America consumes over a billion pounds of cheese every year. That's a lot of cheese for a country that didn't even have a cheese factory until 1851. But the USA is way behind in the cheese game. Per capita cheese consumption is higher in almost all of Europe, markedly so in Switzerland, Italy, Germany, England and of course, France.

Furthermore, most of the cheese America eats is of the processed variety with disclaimers such as "cheese food" and "cheese stuffs." Although these are technically cheeses they do not garner the respect that a french fontainebleu might. André Simon, author of Cheeses calls processed cheese, "a moron-like rindless child" of the cheese family tree that lacks "personality and cheese appeal." So how is it that America ended up the Kraft nation and France home to hundreds of cheeses with new strains being developed even today? Unless you count Velveeta, it has been sometime since a new American cheese has hit the shelves. Simon credits the French preeminence to diverse climates and a plethora of cows, goats, and sheep, as well as a seriousness about what they eat. The United States clearly has two of the three conditions: the terrain of this country is far more comprehensive than in France and there is enough livestock to produce a billion pounds of cheese.

Therefore, the problem seems to lie elsewhere. The argument that Frenchmen take their food more seriously perhaps deserves some examination. After all, America is the country that put meat on a stick and, perhaps more pertinent to our conversation, put cheese into string form.

One issue affecting cheese development seems to be alcohol. America prefers beer to wine as it's alcoholic beverage of choice. But is it not wine that is the cheese's partner in dining? Beer lends itself more to nuts than to cheese. Budweiser and bleu, aside from alliteration, do not exactly go together. So the fact that the French are known for their fine wines and their fine cheeses is not a happy coincidence but rather a symbiotic development. Also, in France a great number of the array of cheeses are soft, spreadable cheeses. Some are even characterized by Simon as nothing more than sour milk.

Another factor in America's underdeveloped cheese world seems to be the Swiss. They were among the original cheese makers in the United States. Almost all staple Swiss cheeses are hard cheeses. Because Swiss immigrants were dominating the fledgling American cheese industry the predominant model favored the hard variety. Furthermore, because of the size of the States, hard cheeses were preferred as they were less likely to spoil on long trips to Little Falls, New York, home of the first and largest cheese market in postbellum America. As a consequence, early America was deprived of a major source of cheese, the soft cheese. Around 1900 the cheese industry in America had begun to shift to Wisconsin. Travel continued to influence the market. With the shift west the need arose for cheese that could withstand lengthy trips across the country. The Swiss, still a strong influence on the cheese industry, had perfected processed cheese in 1910. This revolution in preserving cheese solved the problem of long distance travel.

So it becomes clear that America relied heavily on hard or processed cheeses. The finer, more gentile cheeses however are often spreadable, if not soupy. To a country used to cheese that holds its shape, a semi-solid cheese is unlikely to catch on. Thus we remain mired in the more crude cheeses.

Despite the limited variety of cheeses the food has played an important part in American history. Sally McMurry, author of Transforming Rural Life, credits the industrialization of cheese with transforming the way dairy farms and rural communities operate. Before the cheese industry was seized by the industrial revolution it served quit a different role, however.

Before 1850 cheese was made and consumed on farms. Even in America cheese was not always a hard, mass produced lump of curd. Dairymaids would take excess milk and create butter, cream, and cheese. In these circumstances cheesemaking was more of "an art than a technology," according to McMurry. The goal was not to produce mass amounts of cheese, but simply to create an edible food from the extra milk. The nuance of creating a cheese was left up to the dairymaid. She decided how long to let the curd set and the time and temperature at which to bake it. Finally, she chose the salt to cheese ratio. From these many variables came many distinct cheeses and, although nothing indicates American cheese attained the variety of European cheese, there was at least the personality and cheese appeal that Simon thinks so necessary to a fine cheese. But when the pragmatism of industrialization overtook the American dairy these niceties of cheese making fell by the wayside.

Still I couldn't help but wonder about cheese in America. With today's transportation technologies, soft cheeses would have no trouble staying fresh on trips across the country or the Atlantic for that matter. Furthermore, in today's shrinking world, Americans seem to be opening up to all sorts of foreign cuisines. Why not European cheese? Why haven't America's dairies begun to produce more spreadable cheeses? Why haven't the nuances of the early nineteenth century dairymaids reappeared in our cheesemaking today?

I called Land o' Lakes Dairy's headquarters in Minnesota and spoke to a "consumer affairs specialist" named, appropriately enough, Marjorie. Marjorie was very polite but didn't seem to have any answers for me. I asked her why the dairy industry in America had not adopted the spreadable cheeses from across the pond. "Oh, geez, I don't, uh, I couldn't really give you any, I just don't know." Marjorie did assure me that Land o' Lakes did have some cream cheese in its line of foods but she admitted that the focus was definitely on hard cheeses. When pressed Marjorie postulated that the reason the industry was so exclusively comprised of hard cheeses was because "maybe they made some marketing decisions over the years." I thanked her and hung up.

There is something in the American character that is clinging to hard, processed cheese. Old habits die hard, I suppose. The idea of a soft, spreadable cheese still doesn't get many Americans salivating. To most, Marjory's sentiment of "cream cheese only," seems to be enough in the area of soft cheeses. But there are signs that the resistance is crumbling. Feta cheese, although not easily spreadable, is far from a hard cheese and it has nudged its way into the American eatery scene through the Grecian pizza. Similarly, goat cheese is rarely as hard as its bovine counterpart and it too is becoming increasingly popular. Despite these signs of hope the hard cheddar and the processed american (a cheese of such questionable origin you can request it in a variety of colors) still rule the market, leaving dozens of other types of cheese to the Europeans. Until America can accept the notion of cheese to be broader than a hard white brick, France will continue to dominate the world's cheese imagination.

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