Brave New World of No-Cheese - Cheese Pizza

I'm just back from the supermarket, decided to combine my daily exercise walk with a practical bit of grocery shopping. It's so hot and humid here I hadn't eaten all day, seeing and seeing that frozen pizza was on sale, I decided a single serving size wouldn't be bad at all.

Bzzzt! Wrong! Unless you're in the mood for a mouthful of chemical goop masquerading as cheese...DO NOT BUY SUPERMARKET PIZZA - unless - it prominently displays the 100% REAL CHEESE symbol.

I searched the freezer cabinets and couldn't find a single package of frozen pizza marked 100% real cheese (and that 100% is important, folks!).

What is being foisted off on you is no different in spirit (and sometimes ingredients) than the adulterated, nauseating, and often toxic ersatz mixtures we read about in horror during previous centuries. And you Americans thought the FDA and the USDA were established to protect you? Wrong again.

How Can They Label It Cheese Pizza When There Is No Cheese?

I know, you're thinking, c'mon Barb, there are laws that cover labeling foods. And disclosure and what about the USDA?

Well, once upon a time food packages had to disclose what the contents really were in a truthful manner. Of course there were subtle workaround but at least you had standard clues. If it said cheese, it damn well had to be the natural DAIRY product defined by the USDA as cheese. If it said cheese flavour you know that meant Watch Out!.

With the introduction of mandatory product ingredient labeling (and I won't get into that because that is loaded with allowed cheats)food manufacturers lobbied for rule changes on the package labeling.

On October 22, 2003 the USDA eliminated the standards for pizza products. "The standards were eliminated to allow for more innovation in pizza manufacturing."

So what are they trying to feed you when they sell you ersatz cheese? Start with partially hydrogenated oils (can we say Trans-Fats? I knew you could), soy products, yeasts, fungus, starch, water, emulsifiers, colorings and artificial flavors, HIGH amounts of sodium, and other chemicals. You're basically getting processed oil.

And boy! but that oil looks good compared to the newest cunning trick in imitation cheese manufacture....replacing the oil with Genetically and Chemically altered manufactured FIBER. Yes, "functional fibre" the brave new world newspeak - Novelose resistant starch constitutes the first commercialised concentrated source of enzyme-resistant starch for the food industry.

Soylent Green, People, Soylent Green.
On your pizza.

I didn't buy the frozen pizza. I bought some fresh brown eggs for breakfast tomorrow and some rolls from the bakery. I stopped at the local pizzeria on my way home. I know they use real dairy mozzarella cheese, the empty boxes are stacked up to go into the rubbish tip. The make the pizza themselves. You can watch them making the dough early in the mornings. It's a simple product, crust dough stretched by hand, tomato sauce ladled on, handsfulls of shredded mozzarella tossed on top, pure virgin olive oil drizzled on, a quick flick of oregano. For $1.25 I bought myself 1 slice from a cheese pizza pie fresh from the oven.

Life could be so simple...