5 Feared Foods That Aren't That Bad

1. Processed Cheese

According to an article in Discovery Magazine, in some cases processed cheese may actually be preferable to "real" cheese. Have you ever looked at the ingredient list of your typical supermarket cheese and seen the word "natural enzymes?" Those enzymes are collectively called rennet, which comes from a calf's stomach. Rennet causes the caseins in milk to clump and form curds, which are then pressed and aged by bacteria. However, when cheese made by this process is melted it separates and becomes oily (scientists discovered how to partially reverse that process by adding in sodium citrate). But processed cheese bypasses the bacteria-driven process entirely, resulting in an altered structure that melts smoothly. In the end, so-called processed cheese is really mainly just, well, cheese.