Wordshore's 11

February 11, 2022 12:45 PM

Hundreds of feet below the ground in Missouri, deep in converted limestone mines, caves kept perfectly at 36 degrees Fahrenheit store stockpiles of government-owned cheese comprising the country’s 1.4 billion pounds of surplus cheese. How we got to this point is a long story...

Thanks to Becca Rose for the tweet that drew my attention to this.

posted by rikschell (67 comments total)

*stands and madly applauds thread title*
posted by wenestvedt at 12:56 PM on February 11, 2022 [35 favorites]

Probably needs a "whitesupremacy" tag.
posted by acb at 1:00 PM on February 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

I remember back in that timeframe my grandma received a block of that cheese (like the one Reagan is holding) and she let us dig into it. I could have sworn it felt like/tasted like processed Velveeta. Is all this cheese really pure cheese?
posted by JoeZydeco at 1:02 PM on February 11, 2022

It's a shame that they aren't making varieties of cheese that would benefit from aging.
I don't know what to do about lactose intolerance, but they should be pushing this stuff onto every school, shelter, hospital, jail and prison system in the country. There are a lot of hungry people who can eat cheese that could use it.
posted by Bee'sWing at 1:09 PM on February 11, 2022 [10 favorites]

They could evenly distribute 4-1/4 lb of cheese to every person in the country. They could put it in with our Covid tests.
posted by rikschell at 1:17 PM on February 11, 2022 [24 favorites]

I don’t get the title. Does our own Wordshore have 11 cheeses? Explain joke plz
posted by cnidaria at 1:19 PM on February 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

cnidaria - see previously.
posted by nickmark at 1:22 PM on February 11, 2022 [11 favorites]

Isn't the problem that government cheese is a core part of the diet in prisons, with no exemption for the lactose intolerant (which includes a lot of people of non-Northern-European descent)?

This sounds not that far from that red-state governor forcibly dosing prison inmates with ivermectin.
posted by acb at 1:25 PM on February 11, 2022 [4 favorites]

I had no idea that lactose intolerance was so widespread. Then again, I haven't willingly drunk a glass of milk in 10+ years, either, so maybe I am just kind of thoughtless.

We got hold of a block of that gub'mint cheese in the 80s (probably via a grandma), and it was just cheap Processed Cheese Food. I wish they were using the power & scale of .gov buying to stimulate better product, and not this glop.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:45 PM on February 11, 2022 [5 favorites]

Yeah, the first article mentioned that people in schools and prisons are already being forced to eat dairy...
posted by starfishprime at 1:53 PM on February 11, 2022

I can find no original source for that figure of 1.4 billion pounds, which is apparently about five years old. You can follow various links back, eventually to a USDA page where the figure does not appear, nor does a current stat.

But in any event, a pound of cheese seems to be about 6 cubic inches. So 1.4 billion pounds works out to 4.86 million cubic feet. Which, if you stacked it up into a single cube, would be 169 feet on edge.
posted by beagle at 2:00 PM on February 11, 2022 [3 favorites]

This has been a known issue since fucking Ronald Regan but we are STILL. Still!!!! letting the dairy industry produce twice as much as the market demands, & telling them “it’s chill don’t worry the taxpayers will buy it off you,” leading to net negative effects on the following...

You can't blame Regan for this one entirely, because the cheese stockpile stared in the Carter Administration, as outlined in this delightful episode of Planet Money.
posted by Alison at 2:04 PM on February 11, 2022 [5 favorites]

I now envision the cheese caves as being part of some post-apocalyptic story - a rag-tag group of survivors seeking them out as a source of food, only to find this sign:

This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.

What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
posted by nubs at 2:15 PM on February 11, 2022 [29 favorites]

Why are any federal programs run in states (like Missouri) that hate big government so much? I'm sure those local people don't want a government handout job.

See also: NASA in Houston, Alabama, and Florida, plus all the lovely subsidized military bases all across the south.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:28 PM on February 11, 2022 [10 favorites]

I wonder if there's a secret tunnel from the Springfield Cheese Caverns to Osceola Cheese, a roadside attraction about an hour north of Springfield? They have a huge selection of suspiciously samey cheese.
posted by scruss at 2:36 PM on February 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

What I'm reading is we could have the world's biggest nacho party and maybe even drown most of the US or maybe even most of the world in cheese.

Is my math wrong? Is that really about 4.2 million pounds of cheese for each US citizen at around 330 million people?

I can't even imagine what 4 million pounds of government cheese looks like, much less 1.4 billion.

What the fuck!?
posted by loquacious at 2:54 PM on February 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

Also: Wordshore come back we need your expertise about what to do with too much cheese. Well, "cheese".

Should we roll it down a very steep hill or something?
posted by loquacious at 2:55 PM on February 11, 2022 [9 favorites]

loquacious, in the USA, a billion is a thousand million, not a million million. And even so, your math is wrong.
posted by rikschell at 3:05 PM on February 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

Fortunately the internet contains a cheese-weight-to-cubic-inches calculator already, for your cheese-measuring convenience
posted by ook at 3:33 PM on February 11, 2022 [5 favorites]

(1,400,000,000 lb of cheese = 35,279,406,555 cubic inches = a cube of cheese 273 feet on edge, which we can convert to the traditional American unit of measurement and say a cube roughly a football field long)
posted by ook at 3:43 PM on February 11, 2022 [3 favorites]

Huh. This made me think about two of the school lunches I've see recently. One had a soft pretzel with nacho cheese the other was Fritos, nacho cheese and ground beef. Last summer I taught summer school and we always had nacho cheese "calzones" with the lunches.
posted by nestor_makhno at 4:07 PM on February 11, 2022

...or about four and a quarter pounds each if we divvied it up evenly, like filthy socialists. Or 19,000,000 pounds for Gates, Musk, and Bezos to share; and a bit more than 4 each for the rest of us, if we distribute it in the American fashion
posted by ook at 4:28 PM on February 11, 2022 [16 favorites]

I remember in the 60’s that we sat in school cafeterias noting the existence of government cheese.
posted by njohnson23 at 4:56 PM on February 11, 2022

Why are any federal programs run in states (like Missouri) that hate big government so much? I'm sure those local people don't want a government handout job.

Inertia. Also, until recently even the anti-government types could be bought off with government offices to pass legislation they'd otherwise rail against.

As a kid, I thought government cheese was pretty decent on a ham and cheese sandwich. It also made some pretty good macaroni and cheese at school. Better than the powdered shit they got delivered by the barrel full later, anyway.
posted by wierdo at 5:02 PM on February 11, 2022 [4 favorites]

Huge underground storage of government assets? Sounds like the start of a James Bond thriller.
posted by njohnson23 at 6:22 PM on February 11, 2022 [3 favorites]

Gouda Finger
posted by clavdivs at 7:21 PM on February 11, 2022 [14 favorites]

Moonraclette
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 7:35 PM on February 11, 2022 [15 favorites]

The Man with the Golden Gouda
No Time to Brie
Gruyèrefinger
Octoprovolone
Casino Roquefort
On Her Mascarpone's Secret Service
Mozzarellaraker
posted by kirkaracha at 7:35 PM on February 11, 2022 [18 favorites]

Licence to Brie
posted by nubs at 7:36 PM on February 11, 2022 [4 favorites]

Brie Another Day
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 7:38 PM on February 11, 2022 [5 favorites]

Live and Let Brie
posted by kirkaracha at 7:39 PM on February 11, 2022 [7 favorites]

a pound of cheese seems to be about 6 cubic inches. So 1.4 billion pounds works out to 4.86 million cubic feet. Which, if you stacked it up into a single cube, would be 169 feet on edge.

What are you, some sort of cheese wiz?
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:58 PM on February 11, 2022 [27 favorites]

Also, I think cheese's greatest superpower is the one that induces Mefites to pun mercilessly and endlessly.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:00 PM on February 11, 2022 [4 favorites]

What a friend we have in cheeses!
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 8:13 PM on February 11, 2022 [15 favorites]

I think cheese's greatest superpower is the one that induces Mefites to pun mercilessly and endlessly.

It's just that we're so well-cultured.
posted by 7segment at 8:20 PM on February 11, 2022 [8 favorites]

Brie Larceny?
posted by wordless reply at 8:24 PM on February 11, 2022 [6 favorites]

Nature finds a whey.
posted by notoriety public at 8:27 PM on February 11, 2022 [8 favorites]

You Only Limburger Twice
posted by nickggully at 8:27 PM on February 11, 2022 [5 favorites]

Different types of cheese contain less lactose. Aging reduces lactose; washing whey does too. Of course American cheese is basically the worst possible one in that regard.
posted by joeyh at 9:02 PM on February 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

Casino Roquefort

That one's just Casino Royale With Cheese, I think
posted by Jon Mitchell at 9:19 PM on February 11, 2022 [21 favorites]

Also:

The Living Wensleydaylights
Skyrfall
The Manchego With The Golden Gun

and my personal favourite,

The Spy Halloumi
posted by Jon Mitchell at 9:28 PM on February 11, 2022 [20 favorites]

STOP! You're all drunk. This isn’t Reddit.
posted by brachiopod at 9:29 PM on February 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

Diamonds are Fontina
posted by stevis23 at 9:46 PM on February 11, 2022 [5 favorites]

Casino Roquefort

That one's just Casino Royale With Cheese, I think

Only in Paris.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:50 PM on February 11, 2022 [6 favorites]

big block of cheese another day
posted by clavdivs at 10:18 PM on February 11, 2022

This whole situation is so comically ridiculous and simultaneously unjust that my question is beside the point but: why cheese? Why not, say, milk powder? Something that doesn't require refrigeration and is easier to store and transport? Sure, it takes energy to vaccuum evaporate the milk, but given the transportation and refrigeration savings, surely the government would come out ahead?
posted by Ktm1 at 10:19 PM on February 11, 2022 [4 favorites]

to Ktm1's point even further, why not parmesan cheese? age it and sell it for $24/lb. or even better, flood the market with it so I can afford to eat good parmesan at way less than $24/lb. (and aren't aged cheeses like that lower in lactose content as well...)

On Preview I see joeyh already pointed out the lactose content improvements.
posted by Tandem Affinity at 10:54 PM on February 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

If you think 635,029t of cheese is a lot, think of the much larger amount of whey that required disposing of to make it. Getting rid of a bit of whey isn't a huge problem, but it doesn't really scale.

(Hoping the invention of whey vodka helps this somewhat, but not at these numbers...)
posted by pompomtom at 12:47 AM on February 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

Would love to see the carbon footprint analysis of that gigaton of cheese. How many Rhode Island sized patches of land would we need to plant with trees to equal a years supply of cheese no one wants?
posted by KeSetAffinityThread at 3:49 AM on February 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

See also: Cougar Gold Cheese

(Hey! It's not what you think. Stop that!)
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 4:04 AM on February 12, 2022

If it melts well, I say we sent a block of it with a can of RO-TEL and a bag of chips

My grandmother used to get giant blocks of Government Cheese back in the 80s, through some program or another. I was never entirely clear on why, because she wasn't destitute or anything (though she was cheap). Anyway, the stuff is really not bad, all joking aside. It melts super well and basically makes what I consider to be the ideal grilled cheese sandwich. Good for breakfast sandwiches, too.

It also makes a base for a pretty decent fondue.
posted by Kadin2048 at 5:38 AM on February 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

It sounds like a lot of cheese, but average US cheese consumption per capita is like 40lbs/year, so it's less than a month of cheese.

Why did they take some of the milk proteins out of the cheese?

Because they were in the whey.

Comté of Solace?
posted by snofoam at 5:41 AM on February 12, 2022 [9 favorites]

STOP! You're all drunk. This isn’t Reddit.

No whey! I curd not stop making cheese puns if I tried!
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 6:34 AM on February 12, 2022 [8 favorites]

For cheese puns on Metafilter, this one will never be topped.
posted by emelenjr at 7:01 AM on February 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

I could have sworn it felt like/tasted like processed Velveeta. Is all this cheese really pure cheese?

That’s an insult to Velveeta. Well, the Velveeta of yore, anyway. The stuff that lived in the refrigerator case at the store. That shelf-stable crap they call Velveeta today is actually a lot worse than the government cheese I used to get.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:34 AM on February 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

My grandmother used to get giant blocks of Government Cheese back in the 80s, through some program or another.

Mine too. As I recall, it was in the general area of Kraft American, something along those lines.
posted by box at 11:14 AM on February 12, 2022

"in Missouri..."

Ohhh! That explains government cheese!
posted by symbioid at 12:07 PM on February 12, 2022

Btw, isn't it the case that in cheesemaking, “to american” is a term of art for a process for ensuring consistency or something similar, and the term “American cheese” refers to cheese made using this process rather than, well, cheese from the USA?
posted by acb at 2:19 PM on February 12, 2022

Cougar Gold cheese is actually quite good!
posted by skyscraper at 4:22 PM on February 12, 2022

One thing that Canada and USA have in common is heavily subsidized dairy industries (cow country swing ridings in both cases). We're both lobbying each other for more dairy product exports.
posted by ovvl at 5:35 PM on February 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

In unrelated cheese storage news, an accident in 2016 caused fork lift driver Tomasz Wiszniewski to be trapped for "nine hours buried in his fork lift truck under about four metres of 20kg blocks of cheese." Video of the pallet racks collapsing
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 6:41 PM on February 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

I remember the government cheese giveaway in the 80's. We didn't need it (or deserve it), but my mother was so keen to get free things we stood in a long line and then lied about our circumstances just to get a couple pounds of cheese. I'm sure it was... ok? but I don't remember that part.
posted by jwest at 8:35 PM on February 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

MetaFilter: It also makes a base for a pretty decent fondue.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:30 PM on February 12, 2022

Video of the pallet racks collapsing

WOW. Amazing how that collapse propagates through half the warehouse, like dominoes falling. Or like a modern-day molasses disaster.
posted by beagle at 8:40 AM on February 13, 2022

an accident in 2016 caused fork lift driver Tomasz Wiszniewski to be trapped for "nine hours buried in his fork lift truck under about four metres of 20kg blocks of cheese."

Those are rookie numbers. I could have eaten my way out of there in under an hour.
posted by loquacious at 1:44 PM on February 13, 2022 [3 favorites]

I don't remember the cheese giveaways, apparently our family didn't sign up for it? WHERE DO I GET MY UNCLAIMED CHEESE
posted by JHarris at 2:04 AM on February 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

Rice was also part of the program in the eighties. Not sure if peanut butter was; I think that I may be confusing the government commodities with super-cheap generic foods.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:20 PM on February 17, 2022 [2 favorites]