Yeah, totally.

What the?

In the US, the most popular cheese is mozzarella.

In 2023, Americans consumed nearly 12 and a half pounds of mozzarella per person.

The second most common, cheddar.

Cheddar cheese, which originated in the village of Cheddar in Somerset, is the most popular cheese in the UK.

Our second most popular is actually Red Leicester.

That said, Red Leicester is not a common cheese in America.

More on that soon.

Mozzarella is another favorite in the UK, ranking at number three.

For now, we're gonna focus on cheddar.

There are so many cheese styles and brands in both countries.

For this, we're focusing on top sellers in both countries.

For the US, that's brands like Kraft, Sargento, and Tillamook.

When it comes to cheese brands here in the UK, our best sellers are actually Dairy Lee and Cathedral City.

That said, pretty much every supermarket has their own brand of cheese as well.

Here's some American sliced cheese, starting with this popular brand, Sargento.

This is a medium cheddar.

It's 11 slice package, and it's eight ounces, or 226 grams.

Next to that, we also have a package of Sargento Ultra Thin Sharp Cheddar, with 18 slices.

But, as the name suggests, these slices are much thinner.

The total weight is less than the regular slices.

It's only 6.84 ounces, or 194 grams.

This is paper thin, right?

This cheese, not transparent.

Look, you can read through it.

That's really thin.

I'm a diehard cheese lover, and never once in my life have I said, gee, I wish this cheese was thinner.

Here is the sliced cheddar cheese option from my local Tesco.

A packet of this is only 10 slices, but it weighs 250 grams.

If those slices are too small for you, then Cathedral City offers a large slices option.

While the slices themselves might be bigger, there are actually only six in here, and the whole packet only weighs 150 grams.

It might say large on the packet of this one, but you're actually getting less cheese than a regular one.

I will say, this one's taller, but does not weigh as much as one of these.

It claims that you only would need one of these for a sandwich, but I think that's still small.

That's still smaller than most breads that I've seen.

What about blocks of cheese?

Tillamook Cheddar Bock down here is eight ounces, or 227 grams.

Their mozzarella block is 16 ounces, or 454 grams.

And for the big cheese lovers, we got this cheddar right here, two pounds, or 907 grams.

I'm making cheddar all day, folks.

Hang on, I'm gonna call for my cheddar.

Here are some standard cheese block options from the UK.

I'd say the classic block is this one, which is the 400 gram size.

If you want more, you can go to the Cathedral City Mega Pack, which is 550 grams.

The biggest size in most supermarkets in the UK is this one, which is a 900 gram block.

I wanna take a closer look at the color.

When it comes to cheddar, the standard color in the UK is this kind of pale yellow.

The cheddar in America actually looks a lot more yellow, almost even orange, almost kind of like a sort of red Leicester cheese from the UK.

While it's very uncommon to dye cheddar in the UK, orangey cheeses like this one do in fact get their color from annatto, which is a natural food dye.

Annatto has been added to cheese since around the 18th century.

Cheddar gets its color from cows grazing on beta-carotene-rich grass in the summer, which produces a more yellow milk.

Over time, a more vividly yellow cheese became a mark of quality, because it meant the cows were grazing naturally outside.

In the winter months, cows would graze indoors on hay, and therefore would be getting less beta-carotene and producing whiter milk.

So annatto can be added either to give cheese a more uniform look throughout the year, or to maybe give the illusion of a better fed cow.

Some think that the darker color gives the cheese a stronger and richer taste, but for cheddar, color alone does not affect the taste.

I have some UK cheddar to compare to the U.S. cheddar.

Here is the U.S.

Get a good shot of me cutting the cheese, wah, wah.

Visually, we can already see the difference.

Ours is looking a little more orange.

Theirs is looking more pale.

Let's give it a taste.

I mean, the taste of this, it's a mild cheddar, but definitely has a nice flavor, a full-bodied flavor, I'll say.

Now this one.

Ah, these cheeses let me know what's up.

Earthier flavor.

Wow, this is really good.

It feels like, just feels like this isn't fact that this was something that was processed and made to have this very uniform consistency.

What this feels, feels, is more of a natural product, and therefore is a little bit crumblier than this one.

Does that make sense?

Each country has its own way of grading the strength or the sharpness of a cheese.

Take these cheddar cheeses from Sainsbury's.

Each cheese is assigned a number score to indicate how strong the flavor is.

The higher the number, the stronger the cheese.

As a general rule, cheeses get stronger the longer you leave them to age.

A mild cheddar may only have been aged for a couple of months, whereas an extra extra mature cheddar could go for as long as two years.

As cheeses age, more and more moisture evaporates from them, which concentrates the flavor.

The lactose in the cheese also continues to break down into more and more lactic acid, which produces that tangy sharpness that you get at this end of the scale.

The mildest cheddar in the UK generally gets a number one.

There isn't usually a two score when it comes to cheddar in the UK.

So here we have number three, which is medium, number four, which is mature, and then from there we move into the extra mature realms.

So we have number five, extra mature, and then I even found a six.

This one's just referred to as a vintage rather than extra mature.

In the US, we have a scale that goes something like this.

For cheddar, for instance, we have mild, medium, sharp, and extra sharp.

Sharp cheddar is usually aged six to eight months, and extra sharp cheddar has a minimum age of about 12 to 15 months.

The flavor is determined by the aging of the cheese.

Now, there is no USDA rule about what age correlates to what level of sharpness, so it is up to the producers to decide what to label their cheese.

Now it's time to try, starting with the mild.

Texture-wise, it's interesting.

Compared to some of the other ones, this one is visibly like almost wetter and a bit more rubbery.

Number three, the medium.

The difference is immediately noticeable.

In terms of the amount of moisture in there, you are still getting a relatively kind of chewy, almost rubbery feel to it, but the flavor, definitely stronger.

Next, we're up to four, which is officially in the mature category.

We've now officially jumped from quite a rubbery cheese, I would say, into more crumbly texture.

Here's the five, the extra mature.

Similar in texture to the four, but with much more of that kind of tangy lactic acid flavor that you get from the aged cheese.

And then our strongest cheddar today, the number six.

It's got that really nice, quite strong lactic acid kind of tanginess to it.

Again, all of these are cheddars, which I would say is a good entry-level cheese.

If you wanted to try and kind of develop more of a taste for cheese, great place to start because you have this really clearly laid out scale.

You can work your way up it nice and slowly at your own pace.

So starting down here, just the regular mild.

I really don't pay attention to the sharpness of the cheese I get unless I specifically want something sharp.

So for me, medium and mild are kind of interchangeable.

Going up one step.

Went from like no flavor to flavor.

Then I'm gonna sharp, right?

The sharpness, yes, it's sharper, but it doesn't have as much cheese flavor.

Here we got extra sharp.

I don't think that's much sharper.

The aftertaste definitely has a sharper quality to it, and I want to point out, these are all almost exactly the same color, so more proof that the color of cheese does not have any effect on its flavor or its sharpness.

Let's take a closer look at the ingredients.

The US and the UK have different rules when it comes to using raw or unpasteurized milk to make cheese.

Any US cheese made with raw milk needs to be aged for at least 60 days.

This can lead to cheeses, on average, tasting milder.

The Cheese and Cream Regulations of 1995 govern the labeling and production of cheese in the UK.

If we look at cheddar as an example, the rules dictate that it must contain at least 49% milk fat and a maximum of 39% water.

The US milk fat minimum is 50%, and the maximum moisture is 39%, so it's pretty close for both countries.

We found that, for the most part, US and UK cheddar are similar in ingredients, milk, salt, annatto, and enzyme.

But what about this processed American cheese, a Kraft Singles?

To be considered processed cheese, and not natural, the cheese contains other ingredients, like emulsifiers or milk solids.

Processed cheese has been a product of consumer concern for years.

It can contain preservatives, artificial colors, high sodium, and saturated fats, and is considered by many to not be real food.

Here are Dairy Lee processed cheese slices in the UK.

It includes extra ingredients, such as emulsifiers to help it melt smoothly, and preservatives to extend the shelf life.

Look at this.

Like, I could, like, roll it over my finger and it doesn't break.

Almost alarmingly glossy.

That texture is rubbery.

The ingredients can also change depending on which style of cheese you buy.

In both countries, shredded or grated cheese contains anticoagulants to prevent it from clumping together in the bag.

This Cathedral City shredded cheese, for example, contains potato starch.

In the US, we also have an ingredient called natamycin that acts as a mold inhibitor.

It's fairly common in the US, and does exist in some cheeses in the UK, like this Manchego.

There has been some panic around natamycin.

It's on the Whole Foods banned ingredients list, for example.

But the FDA and the World Health Organization say natamycin is generally recognized as safe, and the Environmental Working Group, a watchdog group, hasn't identified any concerns with it.

You may have noticed that some cheeses are more bendable and smoother, while others are more crumbly and stiff.

This has to do with the amount of moisture in the cheese.

More moisture means softer cheese.

Duh.

Check this out.

Here we have this creamy cheddar.

Nice and moist.

Oof, that's a weird thing to say.

Let's check out the bendability of this, right?

This aged Gouda that I got specifically because it's hard.

I mean, bam, right?

Didn't stand a chance.

Try and go slower.

I can't.

I can't, all right?

That's how hard this cheese is.

Which country eats more cheese?

The average cheese consumption per person per year in the UK is 12.11 kilograms.

That's around 26.7 pounds.

In the US, it's 17.87 kilograms, or 39 pounds, per person per year.

The general US population may have us beaten, but we do have one impressive individual record.

Leah Schutkova, a competitive eater from the UK, holds a Guinness World Record for eating 500 grams of mozzarella in one minute, 2.3 seconds.

How hard could it be?

Perhaps I misjudged how difficult that was.

Not terrible.

Not as much as I thought I might have been able to do, but I beat Joe, so that's the main thing.

In the past year alone, the price of soft cheese like mozzarella has shot up by 4.6%.

The average now sits at around 12 pounds and 2 pence per kilogram. 500 grams of this Galbani mozzarella cost me 5 pounds 90.

Cheddar prices in the US have gone up and down in the past five years.

It started at about $5.20 per pound, hitting a high of $6.08 in September of 2022, and landing at $5.70 in January of this year, an increase of 9.62%.

Here in the UK, the price of cheddar has also shot up in recent years.

In January 2020, the average price was around 7 pound 11 per kilogram.

As of January 2025, that price is now 8 pounds 63.

That's a 21% increase.

The price of cheddar can differ depending on which brand you buy.

The kind of mid-range option is typically the supermarket-owned brand. 400 grams of Sainsbury's cheddar cost me 3 pounds 20.

These days, a lot of supermarkets also have their own budget-friendly brands.

At Sainsbury's, that's Stamford Street.

The same amount of cheese will cost you just 2 pounds 79.

If you want to go branded like Cathedral City, it's probably going to cost you more.

In this packet, you get 350 grams of cheese, which is slightly less than the other two.

Despite that, it's actually more expensive, costing 3 pounds 25.

Brand counts a lot when it comes to shopping for cheese in the US.

Sargento down here, the medium cheddar, 11 slices, or 8 ounces, was 3.99.

Now, a seemingly more premium brand, the Tillamook cheddar, which is 9 slices, but also 8 ounces, so the same amount of cheese total, was $4.99.

It's a buck more.

And, of course, you got these, Kraft Singles.

Look at how much cheese I got here.

Now, I know this isn't cheddar like the rest of these, but I do want to point out that this was 16 slices in this package and 12 ounces of cheese total, so 4 more than either of these.