From Broken Wheels to Liquid Gold
Picture this: it’s 1916, and Jacob Weisl is staring at piles of broken Swiss cheese wheels, watching his profits crumble along with them. What seemed like waste turned out to be the foundation for one of America’s most beloved food innovations. Some of the wheels of Swiss cheese made in his factory in Pennsylvania inevitably broke or were misshapen, leaving a plethora of bits and blocks of cheese that Weisl was desperate to salvage. He had this waste shipped back to Monroe, where the solution was concocted by one of his cheesemakers, a caseiculture genius named Emil Frey.
On his home stove in Monroe, Frey spent two years tinkering. His breakthrough came in 1918, when he devised a new way to mix the cheese pieces with whey, the leftover liquid from milk curds, while adding an ingenious emulsifier to blend the fats and water. The Swiss immigrant had unknowingly created what would become an American icon, transforming discarded cheese scraps into something entirely new.
The Birth of a Velvety Revolution
The result was a cheese that, when melted, became a smooth, velvety sauce. Frey dubbed it Velveeta—and it became an instant hit. The name wasn’t chosen randomly either. The name Velveeta was intended to connote a “velvety smooth” product. This wasn’t just clever marketing – it perfectly captured what made this cheese different from anything else on the market.
By 1923, Weisl had incorporated the Velveeta Cheese Company and was selling his new, sensationally satiny cheese to restaurants and hotels across America and Europe. What started as a waste-reduction experiment had transformed into an international business phenomenon. The timing couldn’t have been better, as America was entering an era of industrial food production and convenience cooking.
Kraft Takes the Wheel
As industrial agriculture rose in the 1920s, Big Cheese soon took over: Kraft Foods bought the Velveeta Company in 1927, and Borden absorbed the Monroe Cheese Company in 1929. This acquisition marked a turning point in Velveeta’s journey from artisanal creation to mass-market phenomenon. Kraft recognized the potential of Frey’s innovation and immediately set about scaling production.
Kraft soon changed the Velveeta recipe, though, crucially replacing real cheese, which has only three or four ingredients, with the paragraph of chemical elements that still graces the package today. This reformulation would become one of the most controversial aspects of Velveeta’s evolution, fundamentally changing what the product actually was while maintaining its distinctive melting properties.
Doctor’s Orders for Processed Cheese
In a move that would seem unthinkable today, Kraft began marketing Velveeta as a health food. Kraft wasted no time marketing the cheese product for its nutritional value, arguing the addition of whey (which includes potentially desirable carbohydrates and minerals) made the cheese a kind of dairy wonder-product. The company even paid for a research study at Rutgers University to confirm Velveeta’s nutritional benefits. This wasn’t just corporate spin – they had serious medical backing for their claims.
In 1931, the American Medical Association gave Velveeta its stamp of approval, citing that the product had all the necessary nutritional value to build “firm flesh.” In the 1930s, Velveeta became the first cheese product to gain the American Medical Association’s seal of approval. This endorsement came during an era when doctors routinely promoted cigarettes, making medical recommendations quite different from today’s standards.
America Falls in Love with Processed Perfection
Velveeta’s popularity increased throughout the ’30s, ’40s and into the ’50s–studies of consumer preference done in the 1930s found that two-thirds of Americans preferred processed cheese to natural cheese. This preference wasn’t accidental – it reflected broader cultural shifts happening across America. Families were embracing convenience, predictability, and modern food technology.
“We as a culture have tended to gravitate toward foods that were—and are—predictable, unchanging and relatively bland,” Werlin explains. Velveeta perfectly embodied this cultural moment, offering consistency in an era when Americans were moving to suburbs and embracing standardized living. In the 1930s and ’40s, Kraft began marketing Velveeta successfully, if rather dubiously, as a health food and diet aid, and its low price and convenience—beloved by kids, shelf-stable, melts like a dream—charmed America’s homemakers throughout the suburban ’60s and beyond.
The Recipe Transformation Nobody Asked For
Originally Velveeta was made from real cheese. Today, it’s mainly whey protein concentrate, milk protein concentrate, milk, fat, and preservatives. By the Food and Drug Administration’s standards, that’s not real cheese—which is why the FDA forced Kraft to change its label from “cheese spread” to “cheese product.” This transformation happened gradually, but the changes were dramatic.
The formulation changed in 1953 to the cheese product we know today. While Velveeta used to be made of real cheese, today, Velveeta cheese is made with whey protein concentrate and milk protein – meaning that it is not technically cheese. The FDA noticed this in 2002, when it sent Kraft a warning letter asking the company to take “cheese spread” off its packaging and replace it with something a bit closer to the truth.
When the Government Says It’s Not Cheese
The FDA informed Kraft in 2002 it could no longer market Velveeta as a cheese. In 2002, the FDA issued a warning letter to Kraft that Velveeta was being sold with packaging that falsely described it as a “pasteurized process cheese spread”, The product listed milk protein concentrate (MPC) in its ingredients, which meant it no longer fit any of the FDA’s cheese-related definitions. This regulatory intervention forced a fundamental reckoning with what Velveeta actually was.
Velveeta is now sold in the US as a “pasteurized prepared cheese product”, a term not defined by the FDA. Which is why it is now labeled as a “Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product.” Say that five times fast. The awkward new terminology reflected the reality that Velveeta had evolved beyond traditional cheese categories into something entirely different.
The Ingredients List That Tells a Story
Kraft Foods lists Velveeta’s ingredients as: milk, canola oil, whey, milk protein concentrate, milkfat, whey protein concentrate, sodium phosphate, and 2% or less of salt, calcium phosphate, lactic acid, sorbic acid, sodium citrate, sodium alginate, enzymes, apocarotenal, annatto, and cheese culture. Compare this ingredient list to traditional cheese, which typically contains just milk, salt, and rennet.
Meanwhile, the ingredient list for most cheeses is milk, rennet, and maybe a little bit of salt. Here’s the thing: you shouldn’t need to add whey to a cheese, because whey is actually produced during traditional cheesemaking (it’s the liquid that’s left after the milk has curdled and been strained). This fundamental difference highlights how far Velveeta had traveled from its cheese origins.
The Queso Connection That Changed Everything
In the 1970s, the first recipe calling for both the cheese spread and diced tomato-chile combination was published. And that famous queso dip is still used today, especially at football and tailgating parties. This simple combination would become one of Velveeta’s most iconic applications, cementing its place in American party culture.
For years, people in the south have been combining cans of Ro-Tel diced tomatoes and chilies with blocks of Velveeta to make a delicious dip. Lyndon and Ladybird Johnson were apparently big fans. That’s when food giant ConAgra, which purchased Ro-Tel in 2002, quietly entered into an agreement with competitor Kraft to promote cans of Ro-Tel and Velveeta side-by-side in stores and through advertisements. This partnership created one of food marketing’s most successful collaborations.
The Great Cheesepocalypse of 2014
Perhaps Velveeta’s most remarkable moment was the devastating Cheesepocalypse of 2014. That’s when Kraft announced a Velveeta shortage, just ahead of the Super Bowl. Back in January 2014, Kraft announced a shortage of Velveeta due to a recall and transition to a new production facility. The timing couldn’t have been worse, falling just weeks before the Super Bowl.
“If this is true, I’m going to die,” one queso-loving fan tweeted—revealing a feverish love for a “cheese product” that, in fact, technically does not contain cheese. Some people wondered if it was all a publicity stunt, something the company denied. Others proceeded to lose their minds. The panic revealed just how deeply embedded Velveeta had become in American food culture.
Modern Velveeta in the Digital Age
Velveeta Shells and Cheese became an instant hit from Kraft since they were introduced to store shelves back in 1978. In 1978, Velveeta Shells and Cheese became the first of Kraft’s products to claim a portion of the “shelf-stable market,” which describes foods that normally would need refrigeration but processing allows them to remain stable at room temperature. This innovation expanded Velveeta’s reach beyond the dairy aisle and into pantries across America.
According to this statistic, 10.56 million Americans used 1 pound or more of Kraft Velveeta American cheese. Despite all the controversy about what Velveeta actually contains, millions of Americans continue to consume substantial amounts of this processed cheese product. The brand has maintained its popularity even as consumer awareness about processed foods has increased.
The Legacy of Liquid Gold
“If you’re a dedicated fan, then you know Velveeta as “Liquid Gold.”” This nickname perfectly captures what made Velveeta special from the beginning – its unique ability to melt smoothly and consistently. It’s an unfortunate reality that cheese, when melted, becomes imperfect–it pools oil (more, the fattier it is) and coagulates quickly, turning a once molten bowl of queso dip into a sad stringy mess. Seekers of gooey cheese can work around this by using a young cheese or a less-fatty cheese, but sometimes, standard hacks just won’t cut it: enter Velveeta, a cheese named for the fact that it melts so smooth.
What started as Swiss cheesemaker Emil Frey’s solution to broken cheese wheels became an American cultural phenomenon that transcended its humble origins. From medical endorsements to Super Bowl shortages, Velveeta’s journey reflects broader changes in American food production, marketing, and consumer preferences. Whether you call it cheese or “pasteurized prepared cheese product,” there’s no denying that this orange block of processed perfection earned its place in American kitchens and hearts.
