🧀 Cheese

Cheese is a dairy product made by coagulating the milk protein casein and separating the curd from the whey ¹². Under the Codex Alimentarius standard it has distinctly more protein than the source milk, and its ratio of whey protein to casein does not exceed that of milk ¹. That is why Codex covers brunost and ricotta in a separate standard for whey cheeses ⁶.

How it is made. Milk (cow's, sheep's, goat's, buffalo's) is acidified with starter cultures and given rennet or another coagulating agent ¹. The curd is cut, heated and stirred to release whey, then moulded, pressed, salted and, for most varieties, left to ripen.

Codex divides cheeses by moisture on a fat-free basis: extra hard under 51%, hard 49–56%, firm or semi-hard 54–69%, soft over 67%. By ripening they are ripened, mould ripened, fresh or in brine ¹. There are also blue and whey cheeses.

Cheesemaking is one of the oldest ways of preserving milk. In ceramic sieves from the sixth millennium BC in northern Europe, chemists found milk fat residues ³. At the Xiaohe cemetery in western China, kefir cheese about 3,500 years old yielded ancient bacterial DNA ⁸. FAO speaks of hundreds of varieties, many tied to a region ².

How much milk it takes. In 2024 the EU made 10.8 million tonnes of cheese from 59.9 million tonnes of whole milk and 17 million tonnes of skimmed milk, or about 7 kg of milk per 1 kg of cheese on average. Germany (2.4 million tonnes) and France (1.9 million tonnes) make the most ⁷. Hard cheeses take more: the Parmigiano Reggiano consortium gives 520 l for a 40.5 kg wheel, almost 13 l per kilogram ⁴.

The EU register holds 272 registered cheese names: 207 PDO and 65 PGI. France (58), Italy (56), Spain (32) and Greece (25) have the most ⁹. They tie a cheese to a place and rules, but say nothing about whether it tastes better than an unprotected one.

Cheese or a cheese product? Searchers keep asking, and the line is legal: in the EU the word cheese is reserved for milk products, so a product where milk fat is replaced by vegetable fat cannot carry it. Cheese also differs from ricotta and brunost: Codex covers these whey cheeses in a separate standard, because they are made from whey protein while cheese is built on the milk protein casein. Processed cheese is a further step, made by melting cheese with emulsifying salts.

Look for the word cheese in the product name and read the ingredients: milk fat, not vegetable fat. Protected cheeses carry the EU PDO or PGI symbol with the full name; the register lists 272 names, 207 PDO and 65 PGI. A protected name ties a cheese to a place and rules, but says nothing about taste. On hard cheeses check the age on the label. Cheese is sold at supermarket counters, delicatessens, markets and farm shops.

Why it matters to you. According to the NHS, most cheeses contain 20–40 g of fat per 100 g: over 17.5 g of fat, 5 g of saturates or 1.5 g of salt per 100 g counts as high; reduced-fat hard cheeses have 16–22 g of fat. Pregnant women, young children, people over 65 and those with a long-term condition or weakened immunity should avoid mould-ripened soft cheeses, ripened goat's cheese and soft blue cheeses unless cooked, as they may carry listeria ⁵.