CHAPTER XXI 

 CHEESE IN THE HOUSEHOLD 



ALTHOUGH cheese in some form is familiar to every 

 household, it has been widely regarded in America as 

 an accessory, almost a condimental substance rather than 

 as a staple food worthy of comparison with meat or eggs. 

 Statistics of the annual production, importation and ex- 

 portation of cheese indicate that the total consumption 

 in the United States is about 300,000,000 pounds per- 

 haps three pounds per capita. The household manu- 

 facture and consumption of cottage cheese would add a 

 small amount to these figures. 



Cheese is used as a staple source of food values among 

 many peoples of Europe. Such use of cheese increases 

 rather than decreases with the density of the population. 

 France with a small fraction of the land area and one-half 

 the population of the United States produces and con- 

 sumes about the same amount of cheese. In America, 

 cheese-making has been developed with the advance of 

 settlement into unoccupied territories only to be dropped 

 as increasing population produced greater demands for 

 milk in other forms. If cheese had been accepted as a 

 regular part of the food supply in such communities, 

 some form of cheese-making would ' have survived the 

 economic changes. 



334. Food value of cheese. A consideration of the 

 nutritive components of cheese shows it to be a rich 



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