I LOVE Shredded Mozzarella Cheese.
Not sliced, and not cubed.
Just shredded.
Because I’ve always adored that powdery texture that only shredded Mozzarella has. It’s just so cool, refreshing, and delicious.
(Which brings me to an aside: why does refrigerated cheese seem like a healthy snack, but melted-cheese-on-anything seems like a hunk of lard that’s headed straight for your hips? Just a thought.)
As I was saying, I love Shredded, COLD, Mozzarella Cheese.
Until this week.
I happened to be absentmindedly looking at the back of the package (tip: NEVER, EVER absentmindedly look at the back of ANY food packaging!!!), and I saw this:
Ew.
Ya learn something new every day. I never knew I had a fondness of the taste of powdered cellulose.
I know that Cellulose isn’t the same thing as Cellulite, but now all I can think of when I see Shredded Mozzarella Cheese is this:
And now, I’ll never be able to eat Shredded Mozzarella Cheese in good conscience again.
Not that I won’t eat it, of course, but I will just be consumed with guilt and fear as I enjoy it’s powdery, delicious, cellulostasticness.
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Yes you should never absent mindly read the labels on anything. It is scary sometimes. I have to say the picture you included may turn me off of cheese too.
Ewww! That's all I have…ewww!
oh my. thanks for the disturbing image. hopefully i'll gain my appetite back soon.
Looking at the back of packages can be scary. And researching the legally amount amount of rat urine, feces, ect. that are allowed in packaged food is even worse. It's almost enough to make me want to return to the pioneer days of growing EVERYTHING I eat!
Grossest picture ever.
So, did you have to dumpster dive to get the cheese package back? Or did you make poor Chris go after it?
I love that cheese too!
And Lianne, it looks to me like that is a brand new package. I can just hear Rachel rationalizing to herself that she needed the package for her blog, she has her spending money from her wonderful budget, so she should just go buy some – with the added bonus that she'll have a whole new package of shredded cheese to eat!
And knowing Chris, he probably went and bought it for her. You know he is an enabler of her chocolate addictions, so he probably enables her cheese addiction too.
EW! The cellulose part didn't gross me out. The picture however….ugh.
ACTUALLY, Lianne and Jennifer, for the record, Ali and I went down to the store yesterday under the "ruse" of buying peaches and milk (which we DID do), so that we could photograph a package of cheese.
So we did, in fact, photograph a new package of cheese, but we did NOT, in fact, buy a new bag of cellulose powder.
(And, for those who don't know what they are talking about, I had tweeted yesterday that unbeknowst to me, my husband had finished off the cheese before I remembered to photograph the package for this blog post.)
EW. How did you get that picture of me? LOL
Oh my! Off to the gym I go…
What about string cheese?
WHAT. that picture is beyond disturbing! :-/
i liked shredded mozz before that picture too…and i agree with you, its much better when shredded, not cubed!
Good thing I read this AFTER I ate!
Oh my!
And SPEAKING of cellulite, I just saw your comment on my blog about Junior Mints. (I didn't get an e-mail when you sent your comment, for some reason, and my husband alerted me to it.)
I will be RIGHT OVER for those Junior Mints. Alabama is close to Georgia, right?
OMG!
I'm totally going to have nightmares….and remember that image whenever I eat Shredded Mozzarella!
YUCK! That's disgusting! Haha, my husband walked in right when I scrolled down and said, "WHAT THE???"
They should put this picture on cartons of ice cream and bags of chips. It would be "helpful."
I can just imagine what your grocery store security people were thinking when you were snapping pictures in the cheese section. They have a picture of you on the wall now, labeled "Kook."
I love shredded mozzarella cheese too! Anytime I'm making pizza at home I always eat half the bag of mozzarella cheese before the pizza is done!
Your ingredient find makes me want to look at all the ingredient lists on my food and see what kind of "interesting" things I can find.
That's just gross.
You have RUINED pizza for me. And for that, I owe you my sincere thanks.
I know this conversation is long-since over, but… No one here seems to know that powdered cellulose is just plant fiber. Cellulose has nothing to do with cellulite. It doesn't contribute to the taste or the fat. It's used in shredded cheese as an anti-caking agent. Powdered cellulose is in countless processed foods, including some very high quality ones, and is about the most natural, harmless additive you could imagine.