Kraft Fat-Free Singles

Kraft Fat-Free Singles: Cheddar
Comes from: cows (I think)
Purchased at: ... Acme?
$... your soul?

Did you ever notice how disgusting food appears in photographs? I think I read somewhere that the animators of Ratatouille actually had to work to make the food look *less* lifelike, and therefore more edible.

We are not cheese snobs here at litvak palate. We do not shy away from adjectives like "socks" or neologisms like "melty." And we are not ashamed of artificial coloring!

[Thought: If one says, "We are not snobs," but in that same sentence is referring to the "royal we," is one automatically disqualified from the sentiment?]

Anyway. Moreover, we here at litvak palate recognize that there are times in a girl's life when she maybe finds it necessary to cut back on some calories. Maybe she has a wedding coming up, or a television appearance, or a fabulous beach vacation, or maybe it is all part of a complex plot to catch herself a millionaire. Or maybe she has just bought into the industrial self-hate complex that is American femininity today.

(Or maybe she has just started a cheese-blog.)

Whichever. We at litvak palate are here for you.

Now, *some* of you may be sniffing in my general direction, falling all over yourselves to instruct me on that French method of weight loss, that theory that if you eat real food with *flavor,* food you can enjoy with each bite, you'll fill up faster and you won't blow up like a balloon even though le chef has incorporated an entire bâton de beurre into your chicken. And sure, food with flavor *does* satisfy you in a way that diet food does not. However, if you, like me, were born with a bottomless pit of a stomach that defies your actual physical size, you know that all the flavor in the world can't make a mountain out of a molehill. (Hi! Mix metaphors much? I do!) You need to pack some *volume* in that bitch. And that's where diet food comes in. (Also, salads. Lots and lots of salads.)

This cheese ("pasteurized cheese product"), then. 30 calories a slice. (A slice is 21 grams or three-quarters of an ounce; most cheese is about 110 calories per 28 grams or one ounce, though your string cheeses and diet cheeses will have less and your delicious, buttery cheeses will have more.) The slices themselves are bright orange and, even taken straight from the refrigerator, have a soft, tofu-y quality to them; they're so soft that they roll rather than fracture when you fold them, so soft that they have to be individually wrapped. I'd rank these slices at about mozzarella level on the hardness scale, though of course they're nothing *like* mozzarella. They're also remarkably nothing like cheddar, which they purport to be. In fact, I've had both the American and cheddar varieties of Kraft's fat-free singles, and they taste... exactly the same. *Exactly.* Except the American cheese is lighter in color, and so it kinda-sorta-maybe triggers something in my brain, like "Oh, this cheese is not that cheese." But it's a placebo effect.

But then, for a placebo effect, this cheese isn't *terrible.* I mean, it's edible. It doesn't have much flavor, but as a corollary, the plastic after-effect taste that accompanies so many diet cheeses (I AM LOOKING AT YOU, FAT-FREE PHILADELPHIA CREAM CHEESE.) is mostly absent. And this cheese melts very well, as you might be able to see had I taken a picture just before I consumed that bowl of... stuff, up there.

(Diet dinner! Spray pan with Pam. Fry up a quarter of a large onion with garlic; add ten or so baby tomatoes, sliced, some crushed olives, and a handful of frozen sugar snap peas. Add oregano, basil, and Jane's Krazy Mixed-Up Salt. Rinse off a package of tofu shirataki pasta, cut it into manageable chunklets, drain well, and add to pan. When there's only a little liquid left in the pan, turn off the stove but leave the pan over the heat. Crack two eggs into the mix; stir well. Allow the heat of the ingredients to cook the eggs to just-past-runny done-ness. Dump contents of pan into bowl; add two slices fake cheese. Wait for cheese to melt. Mix. Total calories: 40 from pasta, 140 from eggs, 60 from fake cheese, plus however you count your vegetables.)

See, the thing is this. I have a certain... theory of diet food. And my theory is that so long as you don't expect the diet versions to taste like the real thing, you'll be okay. Diet pasta does not taste like real pasta; I'm not really sure it has any taste at all, though it does have a certain seaweed-like musk. Diet ice cream does not taste like the full-fat, actual-sugar kind. Diet cheese does not taste like real cheese.

Overall, though, this cheese product isn't terrible. If you let it melt onto your fake pasta for long enough and then take a bite, for a minute it clings to your palate in just the right way, and you can pretend you're eating something you're happy with. Truthiness is to truth as fake cheese is to real cheese.

God bless America.