Nutrition & Wellness – Biology 50

What’s in Cheez Whiz – Easy Cheese?

January 22, 2009

One of your classmates forwarded this Wired article on Cheez Whiz in response to a comment that I’d made in class, wondering if Cheez Whiz is the same as processed Cheese.

The article takes a look at What’s inside Squirt Cheese.

They found the following ingredients:

• Whey – Byproduct of cheese-making process used as a filler.
• Canola oil – Keeps the cheese from solidifying.
• Salt – Preservative, contains twice the sodium of typical organic cheddar.
• Sodium citrate – Emulsifier.
  
• Sodium phosphate – Degreaser, preservative.
• Calcium phosphate – Adding calcium makes it legal for Kraft to label every can “an excellent source of calcium.”
  
• Lactic acid – Byproduct of bacteria digest the milk sugar lactose.
• Sodium alginate – Gum to increase viscosity.
• Apocarotenal - Yellow-orange pigment.

Food Label

In looking at the food label, you can see that most of the calories come from fat, most of them from saturated fat.

One 32 gram serving has over 400 mg of Sodium.

Due to the addition of Calcium Phosphate, the product provides 20% of a Daily Value of Calcium, which appears to be the only healthy component to this cheese product.

It doesn’t appear to me in reviewing the ingredients in Easy Cheese or Cheez Whiz that it would qualify as a healthy food, or as a milk product in the milk group of the food pyramid.

Ingredients:
MILK, WATER, WHEY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, WHEY, CANOLA OIL, MILK PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF SALT, SODIUM CITRATE, SODIUM PHOSPHATE, CALCIUM PHOSPHATE, LACTIC ACID, SORBIC ACID AS A PRESERVATIVE, SODIUM ALGINATE, APOCAROTENAL (COLOR), ANNATTO (COLOR), CHEESE CULTURE, ENZYMES.

More about Easy Cheese from the Nabisco Website.

Sources:

Ingredients from EASY CHEESE KRAFT EASY CHEESE CHEDDAR. Nabisco World.

Justo P. October 2006. What’s Inside: Squirt-On Cheese. Wired Magazine.

Easy Cheese. Wikipedia.

Entry Filed under: Bio 50, Nutrition, Truth in Advertising. Tags: Cheez Whiz, easy cheese, squirt cheese.