Cheap Parmesan Is Made From Delicious Wood Pulp

If so, you may not want to read past this line, because you will be very disappointed…

Castle supplies thousands of retail stores in 30 states with their product, Bloomberg reported, adding that the company’s president, Michelle Myrter, is set to plead guilty this month to criminal charges.

Bloomberg also conducted its own tests of store-bought cheeses and found that cellulose levels in certain cheeses (including Wal-Mart’s Great Value brand “100% Grated Parmesan Cheese”) exceeded the percentage allowable by law.

The FDA has found that some grated Parmesan suppliers have been mislabeling products by filling them with too much cellulose, a common anticlumping agent made from wood pulp, or using cheaper cheddar, instead of real Romano. Cellulose really isn’t dangerous-it’s an FDA-approved additive-but these cheese lies are unacceptable. In fact, according to the FDA’s report on the matter, “no Parmesan cheese was used to manufacture” Castle’s Parmesan.

Federal officials launched an investigation against the manufacturer based in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, and that’s how it was determined that fake cheese had been the company’s specialty for around three decades. The company protested the accusations in a response to the FDA’s original probe, claiming that the agency could only prove the likelihood that Castle was selling parmesan cheese with a misleading label, but stopped producing the cheeses in question and threw away what inventory it had left on hand.

So is your Parmesan made of wood?

Bloomberg News took a further look at a number of those prepared flakes and found that they don’t shake out the way they are labeled and they contain more cellulose than is allowed. Of all the popular cheeses in the US the hard Italian varieties are the most likely to have fillers due to their expense. “No fillers.” Bloomberg reports that may be 100 percent inaccurate. Kraft had 3.8 percent.

Representatives at these stores said they were “investigating” these findings. It’s also the cheese, or the wrong type of cheese.