American cheese

American cheesenoun

• 1

  A common processed cheese, yellow or white in color and mild in flavor, with a medium-firm consistency.

  • Near-synonyms: rat-trap cheese, rat cheese, government cheese
  • Many of you other brothers can't deny that American cheese on white bread with yellow mustard is a guilty pleasure that reminds us of our childhood.
• 2

  Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see American, cheese: any cheese made in America.

  • The opinions on importation of American wheat and steel did not seem as negative as those against importation of American cheese and beer.
  • After all, I’ve spent 15 years following the U.S. cheese scene, first as a lone blogger and now as an author of two cheese books, so I’ve put in my time as a turophile. I don’t let anyone conflate “American cheese” with Kraft Singles—not when there is so much good craft cheese being made stateside. Cheese has come a long way in the U.S. since its production became industrialized in the 1800s, when we began pooling our milk supply to pump out cheap factory-made blocks. It took a brave band of dairy dames in the 1970s and ’80s—fondly known as “the goat ladies” in cheese circles—to kick off a full-blown artisan movement around the country.