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europeans are not purists about cheese, europe has the same "supermarket brands" of cheese that the US does. It's a marketing move for the quality producers of

europeans are not purists about cheese, europe has the same "supermarket brands" of cheese that the US does. It's a marketing move for the quality producers of regional cheese varieties to protect their market by proclaiming that their cheese is the authentic one, and others (with no regard to quality) are not. it's wanting to own the name. The Sardinians are proud of their cheese that they eat with the maggots in it, it's not about purity.

myrmidon 1y ago
> europe has the same "supermarket brands" of cheese that the US does. I'm not certain about your exact meaning, but I disagree here. Cheese availability in supermarkets is strongly regional even within Europe, and most non-local varieties are either impossible to get, or have to be ordered at 4 times the price outside their regions. E.g. You can buy perfectly adequate taleggio cheese in an Italian "Lidl" supermarket, but stores (from the same chain!) just 2 car hours away wont have it, and there is no "unbranded" local replacement either. You do get some very generic kinds of cheese pretty much everywhere ("vegan cheddar", sandwich slices mostly consisting of emulgators and color, Emmental, Gouda, Parmesan, ...) but the availability/selection even for very well-known cheeses (like pecorino) decreases quickly as you leave their regions. I do agree that a big motivation is to reduce competition and protect regional monopolies basically, but in many cases this also protects and preserves the identity/taste of that product itself, by preventing large international producers from turning distinct regional products into lowest-common-denominator mass-market trash.
- fsckboy 1y ago
  the only difference between what you wrote and what I wrote is that I distilled it down to one sentence so I could move on to make a point about something else; we can't write a treatise about the cheese industry and grocery distribution and regional tastes every time we want to talk about fascism and trademarks. you understood what I meant, there is industrial scale dairy and artisanal dairy, and that has implications for health (industrial scale dairy can poison a whole country if it's impure) and a for quality (artisinal scale dairy can have more complex and unique flavors)

myrmidon 1y ago

> europe has the same "supermarket brands" of cheese that the US does. I'm not certain about your exact meaning, but I disagree here. Cheese availability in supermarkets is strongly regional even within Europe, and most non-local varieties are either impossible to get, or have to be ordered at 4 times the price outside their regions. E.g. You can buy perfectly adequate taleggio cheese in an Italian "Lidl" supermarket, but stores (from the same chain!) just 2 car hours away wont have it, and there is no "unbranded" local replacement either. You do get some very generic kinds of cheese pretty much everywhere ("vegan cheddar", sandwich slices mostly consisting of emulgators and color, Emmental, Gouda, Parmesan, ...) but the availability/selection even for very well-known cheeses (like pecorino) decreases quickly as you leave their regions. I do agree that a big motivation is to reduce competition and protect regional monopolies basically, but in many cases this also protects and preserves the identity/taste of that product itself, by preventing large international producers from turning distinct regional products into lowest-common-denominator mass-market trash.

fsckboy 1y ago
the only difference between what you wrote and what I wrote is that I distilled it down to one sentence so I could move on to make a point about something else; we can't write a treatise about the cheese industry and grocery distribution and regional tastes every time we want to talk about fascism and trademarks. you understood what I meant, there is industrial scale dairy and artisanal dairy, and that has implications for health (industrial scale dairy can poison a whole country if it's impure) and a for quality (artisinal scale dairy can have more complex and unique flavors)