Velveeta is a brand name for a processed cheese similar to American cheese. It was invented in 1918 by Emil Frey (1867-1951) of the Monroe Cheese Company in Monroe, New York. In 1923, The Velveeta Cheese Company was incorporated as a separate company.[1] In 1925, it advertised two varieties, Swiss and American.[2] The firm was purchased by Kraft Foods Inc. in 1927.[3]
History
In 1888, the new owners of the Monroe Cheese Co., Adolphe Tode and Ferdinand Wolfe, hired former Neuesswanders Cheese Factory’s cheesemaker Emil Frey. While they would see success with one of Frey’s creations, Liederkranz cheese, they still ultimately fell into financial problems resulting in the foreclosure of the property. In 1891, Jacob Weisl purchased the company from the Goshen Savings Bank. Weisl set up a second factory in Covington, Pennsylvania, that made mostly Swiss cheese. He would have the broken pieces of cheese sent up to Monroe hoping to find a way to prevent the waste. It was during this time that Frey began taking broken pieces of cheese back to his house where he spent two years working on a process to make use of them. In 1918 he had his breakthrough, mixing cheese byproducts with the broken cheese bits to form a cheese blend that would become known as Velveeta. The name Velveeta was intended to connote a "velvety smooth" product.[4]
On February 14, 1923, Frey incorporated a separate Velveeta company independent from the Monroe Cheese Co. In 1926, the Monroe Cheese company closed down and one year later Velveeta was sold to Kraft.[5][6] The brand has since been expanded into a line of products including cheesy bites, macaroni and cheese, and cheesy skillets.
In the 1930s, Velveeta became the first cheese product to gain the American Medical Association's seal of approval.[7] It was reformulated in 1953 as a "cheese spread",[7] but as of 2002, Velveeta is labeled in the United States as a "pasteurized prepared cheese product".[8][9]
Classification as a pasteurized prepared cheese product
In 2002, the FDA issued a warning letter to Kraft that Velveeta was being sold with packaging that falsely described it as a "pasteurized process cheese spread",[11] The product listed milk protein concentrate (MPC) in its ingredients, which meant it no longer fit any of the FDA's cheese-related definitions. Velveeta is now sold in the US as a "pasteurized prepared cheese product",[12] a term not defined by the FDA.
In the 1980s, Velveeta used the advertising jingle, "Colby, Swiss and Cheddar, blended all together" in its US television commercials to explain its taste and texture because real cheese was used in the product at that time.[16]
