Did Someone Say Cheese!
Cheese is part of what we have been eating from the beginning of time. Cheese is an ancient food whose origins predate recorded history. There is no conclusive evidence indicating where cheesemaking originated, whether in Europe, Central Asia or the Middle East. The earliest proposed dates for the origin of cheesemaking range from around 8000 BCE, when sheep were first domesticated.
The first actual evidence of cheesemaking was found in the art on Egyptian tomb walls that dates back 4,000 years.
Cheese likely began as a preservation method by pressing and salting curdled milk. Animal skins and inflated internal organs already served as storage vessels for various foodstuffs. Curdling milk in an animal’s stomach produced solid and better-textured curds, which could have led to the conscious addition of rennet. Hard salted cheese, suitable for hot climates, likely accompanied dairying from the outset. The earliest written evidence of cheese appears in Sumerian cuneiform texts from the Third Dynasty of Ur, dating to the early second millennium BC.
Mass production of cheese didn't occur until 1815 in Switzerland when the first cheese factory was built. Soon after, scientists discovered how to mass-produce rennet and industrial cheese production spread like wildfire.
Most of the world’s population is lactose intolerant; once children stop breastfeeding, their bodies reduce production of the lactase necessary for digesting milk. But because of varying protein sources in different regions of the world, indigenous peoples learned to adapt. While 95% of Caucasians are lactase retentive and continue to properly digest dairy, the figure drops to 50% for people of African descent and only about 5% of east Asians. This is why you almost never find milk, cheese, or dairy products in Asian food, and why cheese consumption by country varies so widely.
So, who eats the most cheese?
France – 57.9 pounds per year
Germany – 53.2 pounds per year
Luxembourg – 53.2 pounds per year
Iceland – 53.2 pounds per year
Greece – 51.5 pounds per year
Finland – 49.5 pounds per year
Italy – 48 pounds per year
Switzerland – 48 pounds per year
Estonia – 45.8 pounds per year
Netherlands – 42.7 pounds per year
Now, of course, the United States is much larger than those European countries, and certainly consumes the most cheese as a nation. According to the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, the U.S. leads the world in cheese production at 11.1 billion pounds, followed by Germany at 4.81 billion, France at 4.27 billion, and Italy at 2.55 billion.
“Life is Great. Cheese makes it better.”