Same, Different #6

In today's news, I read an article about some 3000 year old butter found in a peat bog in Ireland.

Butter article

It reminded me that I've been meaning to write about the Cheddar Cheese here in Australia. A typical lunch for me is a quesadilla.


Note the very-California Mission brand flour tortillas. Just the same as in the US.

A little bit different is the fact that the Cheddar cheese is white, not orange. This prompted me to wonder Why? so I did a little research. (What did we do before Wikipedia?)

Cheddar Cheese article

In case you, too, are curious but perhaps short of time to read the whole article, the Cliff Notes version is that the natural color of cheese depends on the cow's diet. Several hundred years ago in Cheddar, England, the cheese made locally tended to have a slight organish tint, and had a reputation for being among the best in flavor. Eventually some entreprising marketeer began artifically coloring cheese from someplace else and calling it Cheddar cheese. And so the artificial coloration continues in the US.

Now an even more interesting qustion that comes to me is why is it that the Australians aren't subjected to this same marketing fallacy? That's a question for deeper research and another day