Government cheese

Government pheese is processed cheese that was provided to welfare and food stamp recipients in the United States during the 1980s. (The style of cheese predated the era, having been used in military kitchens since the Second World War.)

The cheese was bought and stored by the government's Commodity Credit Corporation. Direct distribution of dairy products began in 1982 under the Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program of the Food and Nutrition Service. According to the government, it "slices and melts well." The cheese was provided monthly, in unsliced block form, with generic product labeling and packaging.

Currently, the USDA provides a subsidized food program for specific classes of foods in the United States known as the Women, Infants and Children program, as well as other programs such as The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP).

Ingredients

Like all American processed cheese, it consists of a variety of cheese types and other ingredients such as emulsifiers blended together, and may be made of any of cheddar cheese, Colby cheese, cheese curd, or granular cheese. The cheese was often from food surpluses stockpiled by the government as part of milk price supports. Butter was also stockpiled and then provided under the same program. Government cheese was required to be made of Kosher products. This cheese product is also distributed to victims of a natural disaster following a State of Emergency declaration.

In popular culture

• In the United States the term has been used, sometimes derisively, to describe monetary government assistance given to those who are in need of financial help; for example, a person receiving such aid could be said to "live on Government Cheese."
• A series of Saturday Night Live featured Chris Farley as Matt Foley, a fictional motivational speaker who was 35 years old, divorced, lived in a van down by the river, and claimed to "live on a steady diet of government cheese."
• In "Weird Al" Yankovic's 2008 single Whatever You Like (a parody of T.I.'s song of the same name), the narrator says that his girl can share his government cheese.
• In the Married with Children episode "Business Still Sucks", Al Bundy claims that if he loses his job through a scam, he will fight for government cheese with tough women.
• Stephen Lynch's song "Pierre" describes a homeless man who is French, and sings "I have to have wine with my Government Cheese."
• MADtv parodied Destiny's Child's video for "Emotions", in which Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams sing they're so underpaid compared to Beyoncé Knowles that they're eating government cheese.
• Some Latino comedians, such as Carlos Mencia and George Lopez, have ranted about government cheese.
• In Steve Harvey's "That's Deep", one of his jokes centers around government cheese's popularity with poor black families.
• During the 1990's MTV featured a series of sketches staring Jay and Silent Bob, one depicted the two being forced to babysit a Jay's niece for a short amount of time so she could get government cheese, under the threat of no more "grilled cheese sandwiches"
• In the mid-1980's, the Missouri band The Rainmakers released a song with the title "Government Cheese". It was scathing in its contempt for grifters who lead lives of willful welfare dependence and laziness.

See also

• Women, Infants and Children (WIC) U.S.D.A. Food & Nutrition Service
• The Emergency Food Assistance Program

External links

• USDA Commodity Requirements - PCD5 Pasteurized Process American Cheese for Use in Domestic Programs - description of government cheese