Hundreds of thousands of pounds of American cheese sounds delicious doesn't it? Well, not really. Especially when you take into account that the cheese, which is stored below ground in caves, has a slight bit of mold on it. And don't forget the cheese is American cheese, the most unappetizing cheese known to man.
There's about 1.4 billion pounds of this cheese being stored in Missouri. And the way we got here isn't surprising. It all started with the government trying to help. During a dairy shortage back in the 1970s, prices for milk and cheese soared, leading to the Carter administration’s well-intentioned decision to heavily subsidize dairy farmers. The plan was to keep milk prices stable by purchasing excess milk from farmers and turning it into cheese, which, unlike milk, has a long shelf life. This plan, while great in theory, quickly spiraled out of control.
By the 1980s, the government found itself in possession of over 500 million pounds of cheese, with no clear plan on how to offload it. They thought destroying it would have been a waste. So the government decided to stuff it in limestone caves under Missouri that have the perfect climate for storing cheese, remaining a cool 36 degrees Fahrenheit year-round.
Eventually, the government decided they needed to offload some of that cheese. This, naturally, led to the creation of the infamous "government cheese," a product distributed to low-income families during the Reagan administration. Think of it as a slightly moldy, vaguely unappetizing time capsule of America's dairy mismanagement. In other words, it tastes slightly worse than your local grocery store's American cheese.
