17 Surprising Things That Make You Happier (and 4 that Don't)

A NEW STUDY finds that...ready? "Living near a bar makes you happier." The study was funded by the "Campaign for Real Ale." (This is like an umbrella manufacturer funding a study about whether people enjoy getting rained on.) As someone with a personal and professional interest in the roots of happiness and satisfaction, I constantly come across tips, life hacks, studies, and anecdotes about how to wring every last drop of joy from existence.

Most of these sources are trying to sell something. Sometimes they're just trying to sell themselves on the validity of their choices. ("I spent $400 on a gym membership, because then I have to get in shape.")

The other species of happiness reporting is the NEW STUDY. There is a hint of desperation in the ceaseless drip of studies proclaiming chocolate and red wine are keeping us young and smart and happy. But...being a regular at a local bar? Seriously?

This made me wonder if there was anything for which I could not find a happiness hype man. Armed with a Google, I bravely looked high and low for happiness. After I headed to the local bar, I saw some of my friends.

Did it make me happier? Yes, and that is consistent with a study that says having friends makes you happier. The linked article (and study) are careful, however, to make it clear that having friends does NOT make you live longer. In fact, seeing your family and friends could lessen your lifespan, according to the article.

Thinking about how simply knowing my family is a slow leak in my well-being, I had a sip of beer. Enough to make me happy? Yes, all it takes is a sip, according to this study. I've been doing it wrong all these years.

So living in an episode of Cheers can make you happier. But what about watching an episode of Cheers? Of course! Watching TV makes you happier! (According to that article.)

Looking this stuff up is fun, I must admit. In a way, it's making me...happy. Is this normal? Yes! Browsing the web makes you happier, according to this article from Psychcentral!

It's making me happy to find a study or pop-psyche article confirming that nearly everything makes you happy. Blogging about it is satisfying. But is blogging itself satisfying? Of course, and you can read all about it in this article about how blogging can make you happier.

But most of my readers are not bloggers. They come from all walks of life, with the unifying fact that they shop at East Lansing's favorite natural food store, Foods For Living. Does that mean you're left out of this endless parade of joy? No! Because...

Grocery shopping makes you happier!

Shangri-la

Although you might not need the happiness boost so evident when breezing down the aisles. If you're shopping at Foods For Living, you're in East Lansing, and guess what?

East Lansing makes you happier! Yes, ole EL's aura has been slowly leaching into your soul over the years, subtly improving your quality of life, according to the Movoto Real Estate Blog. In fact, it's the second best small city to live in, after some place in Pennsylvania.

This had me wondering if there was anything that, under certain circumstances, couldn't make you happier. I took to the Internet with total abandon.

Downhill skiing? Happier!

Video games? Happier! (Somewhere, a senator, or maybe Tipper Gore, is also trying to prove that video games make you into a psycho killer, too—just like how all that Farmville caused all those career people to upend their lives and take up farming, bringing our economy to its knees.)

Music? Happier. Unless you're in a compound and the FBI is blasting some ironic tunes at you.

Chocolate? Well, would it even matter? Do we really need another study telling us about the health and emotional benefits of chocolate? Probably not. But here's one.

What about clouds? Happier! Yes, even the icon of dreariness itself can make you happier, apparently.

Clouds may make you happier, but they're only a symbol. Your own "dark clouds" can't possibly make you happier, right? After all, "dark clouds" is a metaphor for unhappiness...wrong! "How owning your dark clouds can actually make you happier," for your edification.


So, seriously...is there anything that is actually just, well, bad? Something that refuses to make you happier, no matter the spin? Yes, yes there is.

The news.

Lovin' life.

The news does not make you happier. In fact, the opposite is so conclusively the case that simply trying to find any evidence of a happiness-news connection is enough to summon an avalanche of cautionary articles about keeping up with current events. (I read the news every day. It's best to stay miserably informed, I guess.)

Also, dentists. People uniformly hate dentists. Just ask this dentist.

And divorce. People also don't like getting divorced, even if they are admittedly happier afterward sometimes.

And this particular McDonald's mascot. People really hated that, and it did not make them happy.

But most everything else makes people happier, somehow. Being late? Check. Cold showers? Yes, obviously.

Certain temperatures? Yes indeed.

Being Voldemort? Well, that question is a bit more difficult... Can you be the modern embodiment of pure cunning and evil, and still be happy? I'll let you be the judge.

Taking the Mystery Out of Listeria

There's little that's less fun than foodborne illness. In case you missed it, a listeria outbreak is making headlines, getting people sick (and worse), and turning people away from salad. As always, knowledge is our ally here, so I thought it prudent to cover some basics about both the outbreak and listeria generally.

Let's get this out of the way:

It's still safe to buy and eat salad from Foods For Living. 

Foods For Living doesn't sell any of the brands that were affected by the outbreak, so there's nothing to worry about here.

As noted at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention website, the affected brands are:

• Dole
• Fresh Selections
• Simple Truth
• Marketside
• The Little Salad Bar
• President's Choice Organics

These brands are all packaged at multiple facilities. It seems that the listeria outbreak originated at a Dole packaging facility in Springfield, Ohio. (Springfield was also the home of 4H founder Albert Belmont Graham, and the first U.S. city with an African American mayor, so don't let this listeria thing tarnish your impression.) 

Packaged foods usually bear a manufacturing code that indicates their origins, for precisely times like this. 

The manufacturing code for the Springfield Dole plant begins with "A." If you have salads from the above brands, and they have codes beginning with "A," you should throw them away. You should wash the refrigerator drawer/area that held the salad thoroughly. You should also wash cutting boards, bowls, and anything else that may have contacted contaminated salad. 

How bad is listeria?

As these things go, not too bad. Don't get me wrong—it can make you sick, and even kill you, but your experience with it depends on your immune system. And it's not ebola. As with many bacterial infections, the young, elderly, and pregnant mothers are most at risk. Sadly, there has been a death associated with this outbreak in Michigan. That said, you are more likely to have severe digestive issues and fever symptoms than anything. Listeria is a bacterium, so an infection can become invasive; that is, it can move from an initial infection site (such as the GI tract) to other systems (such as the blood). If you suspect you may have listeria, you should certainly see your doctor immediately. A blood test is usually conclusive.

Is this outbreak unusual?

Listeria outbreaks happen every year, but not often. Each one is considered a serious public issue, and investigated by the CDC. About 1,600 people get listeria each year; an average of 240 people die from it. Last year, Karoun Dairies and Blue Bell Creamery both had listeria issues. One or two big outbreaks each year is par for the course. 

How can you prevent getting listeria? 

I'll list the CDC's guidelines here verbatim:

• Rinse raw produce, such as fruits and vegetables, thoroughly under running tap water before eating, cutting, or cooking. Even if the produce will be peeled, it should still be washed first.
• Scrub firm produce, such as melons and cucumbers, with a clean produce brush.
• Dry the produce with a clean cloth or paper towel.
• Separate uncooked meats and poultry from vegetables, cooked foods, and ready-to-eat foods.

Special consideration should be given to things like liquid from hot dog packages that spills into the refrigerator. No one likes to puncture a dog, but don't let the shame keep you from using hot water and soap on the area after you spill. 

Is anyone doing anything about this?

There has been a recall, of course. You should still be vigilant and ensure that the salad you're buying didn't get missed. 

Besides that, there is always an investigation from the FDA and CDC with a listeria outbreak. Though we don't know how this will proceed in the case of Dole, we can assume it will be similar to the process initiated in the Karoun case. 

What now?

Wash your produce, clean your meat spills, check your salad packages for the "A," and shop without worry at Foods For Living. Next week we can talk about something more fun!

Come On, Just Read This Thing About Sugar

People understand that killing the messenger is wrong; that's why the phrase exists. It's an enduring idiom, with versions of the notion present in the records of ancient China, ancient Rome, and Shakespeare. It endures for the dismalest of reasons, namely, that people want to kill the messenger and must be cautioned against it.

All I'm saying is that I want you to give up candy and sweets because I care about you, and I don't want you to murder me for saying so. (I don't really think you'll murder me, but if pageviews are any indicator, you don't want to hear bad news or even think about sugar.) I understand that life can be hard, or boring, and that jamming straight crystallized happiness into your brain can be the only redeeming aspect of some overcast days. That's essentially why so many of our troops became addicted to heroin in Vietnam.

Heroin and sugar both target the nucleus accumbens, which is the reward center of the brain. (So do exercise and correctly answering Jeopardy "answers," so this could be misleading without context.) The problem is that drugs and sugar both bypass the whole "doing-stuff-in-life-to-get-chemical-rewards-in-your-brain" thing, and just give you the rewards, no questions asked. It's like having a key to the back door of the Staples Reward Center, instead of earning enough points on every eligible purchase to get that "free" Lion King mousepad like an upright citizen.

You probably don't do heroin for a number of reasons. I can make this assumption, in part, because people doing heroin tend to have minimal interest in reading nutrition blogs. It's statistically likely that you don't smoke cigarettes, either, for similar reasons. Those habits are costly, dangerous, and frowned upon by a majority of the population. This creates a culturally-constructed bulwark against getting involved with junk and cigs alike.

In other words, you don't have to think very hard or exercise much self control to never begin injecting smack or suffering through your first pack of Kool Milds. Your culture is helping you avoid those choices at every step of the way.

Enter sugar.

You wake up, and you want to eat. Something sweet? Sure. Or something savory, like bread, injected with high fructose corn syrup. Wait, what? Maybe just some fruit juice and a "natural" granola bar with some sugar not added, exactly, but rather present in the things the manufacturer included because they naturally contain sugar. Regardless, after you eat breakfast, you've probably had your daily allotment of sugar. But you're just getting started.

At this point, many people know that sugar is in nearly everything we consume. The reason is simple: it is delicious and addictive, and those are properties you want products to have if you make consumable products for a living. So what's the big deal?

When you consume fructose (in honey, fruit, berries, root vegetables, or nearly any processed food) your body uses the liver to metabolize it. Your liver will try and keep up with the demand of the 130 pounds of sugar (on average) you'll consumer this year, but it will ultimately fail. Then what?

The extra sugar is converted into fat within the liver. This is bad. Diabetes bad. The extra fat also spills into your bloodstream, which is also bad.

All this is metabolically inevitable when you consumer a high-sugar diet, which you'll want to do because... sugar also impacts that nucleus accumbens, remember? So the opioid receptors that make drug addicts such unpredictable roommates are working overtime in your own brain to keep you coming back to the sugar which is ruining your liver and blood.

None of this is "natural," because technology and industrial food production and marketing trends evolve much more quickly than human biology. Historically, it would be hard to get diabetes: you would only have an ounce of sugar when your tribe finds some berries, for instance.

So how can you keep your blood clean and not live some kind of fructose-induced Trainspotting nightmare? There is a solution that's not entirely depressing.

Eat more savory and sugarless and low-sugar snacks! Yes, the solution can still involve eating! Isn't this great? Don't reward the messenger; that would be equally unfair.

A recent study by Robert H. Lustig et al. showed that replacing sugary calories with other (delicious) calories, like those you'd find in a bagel, can reduce the destructive effects of sugar in children.

It's easy to say that moderation is key, and one can simply exercise discipline in regard to the cultural onslaught of sugar. The problem is that "moderation" relative to modern sugar levels is not true moderation. Our diet is so sugar-slanted that we are always grading on a curve, even when we think we are being "moderate" in our sugar intake.

The bottom line: don't forget that the first word in "junk food" is "junk." To put it another way, sugar gets diplomatic immunity in your brain, and sometimes you need to treat it like that guy who claims diplomatic immunity at the end of Lethal Weapon 2.  Got it? Maybe a rewatching is in your future. Cue that bad boy up, grab a bagel and a water, and relax.

Be well!

What Do Egg Labels Really Mean?

Last month, Taco Bell joined a slew of fast food and Big Agra companies who have pledged to begin using "cage free" eggs. These companies have pledged to utilize entirely cage free eggs by specific, self-imposed dates with sci-fi names like 2020 and 2025. Taco Bell, a subsidiary of the Yum Brands megacorp, was a late passenger on the bandwagon, but they may be the first to hop off with an armload of "happy" chickens: Taco Bell will be cage free by the end of 2016. The faux-Mexican food giant will presumably be on the other side of the cage free border when Burger King, McDonald's, and food suppliers Michael's Foods and Sodexo SA arrive in the next few years.

Why is this happening? At great cost and and inconvenience, assuredly soulless corporate colossi are going to install a less-efficient food system. The quick answer: they're doing it because the demand for cruelty-free and humanely-raised food is no longer restricted to people from Portland and Ann Arbor. Documentaries and books about the horror of football chickens are widely available, and things the Foods For Living crowd has known for years have become common knowledge. Now that we'll be seeing these terms bandied about constantly, let's examine what they actually mean, lest "cage free" become the new "natural."

Let's use the magic of prose to transform what "cage free" sounds like into what it is.

"Cage free" conjures a scene where chickens are strolling around the interior of an old red barn. They are pecking at seeds. The smell of a fresh apple pie wafts into the barn from the nearby farmhouse kitchen. Dusty shafts of golden light preside over the whole affair, as dozens of chickens go about their business, moving their chicken heads like they're hearing Parliament for the first time.

The light changes. The golden shafts of Midwestern sun become pale and dry as they are replaced with industrial fluorescent light. Our dozens of chickens flap their wings and hop to and fro at the surprise of a few thousand new neighbors springing to life all around them. The waft of apple pie is replaced by the odoriferous reality of a few thousand chickens in close quarters. Each flap of a wing is a collision with a neighbor, who flaps accordingly, ad infinitum. Before long, chickens are getting testy. This is a prison yard where every inmate has a shank attached to its face. The scene is going from Norman Rockwell to Mad Max, fast.

Now this isn't to say that cage free chickens aren't happier and healthier. It is impossible to imagine that being able to move a foot or so in any direction is actually inferior to the total  confinement which has been the norm. But how much healthier is cage free living?

Janice Swanson, an MSU animal scientist, is trying to answer that question.

According to her study, cage free chickens are more than twice as likely to die. The cause of death is usually chicken-on-chicken violence. That said, life outside the cage creates stronger bones and feathers, and presumably a better quality of life. Until you're stabbed to death.

What about Farm Fresh? What the heck does that mean?

Farm Fresh is a great label, marketing-wise. It means that, at some point, the eggs in question were created on a farm—mind you, a farm is any facility where you might create said eggs. Cool, huh? The "fresh" part means that the eggs weren't allowed to sit around for weeks after they were made, AKA they're "any eggs you'd ever buy." So Farm Fresh refers to eggs that...are...you know, eggs that are not spoiled, and created for profit...OK, it doesn't mean anything.



Do I dare even ask about "All Natural"?

Be my guest. The All Natural label means as much as it ever has. 95% of chickens are raised in battery cages--which remind me of the setup favored by those malevolent AIs in The Matrix. This setup is as All Natural as a farm with 8 chickens on it, legally speaking.

Hormone-free

You can't legally give chickens hormones in the U.S.A., so this is true, if a bit misleading. I'd like to see the label amended to include other undesirable practices that weren't part of the eggs' production. Now, child-labor-free eggs!

Free Range

This means that the chickens are given a 401k with matching contributions by the farmer, up to 5%, two weeks paid vacation, and maternity leave. The only condition is that the maternity leave never ends, and must be taken inside the barn, with access to the outdoors.

Yes, free range chickens must be able to go outside if the "free range" label is used. Moreover, there is no government oversight of free range egg farming, so this doesn't necessarily mean anything in practice.

It's also important to note that the ammonia-clearing industrial fans in the aviaries (chicken barns) create ultra-strong winds in the doorways between the interior and exterior, which the chickens generally avoid.

Fed a vegetarian diet

You may know a lot of vegetarians, but none of them is a chicken. Chickens eat worms and bugs from the soil when they're allowed. Through science, we can ensure they have a vegetarian diet, but this is not All Natural. This does mean, however, that they aren't eating other chicken parts, so there's that.

Pasture-raised 

This may be the only term that approaches what you think it means. Pasture-raised chickens indeed live their lives in pastures, with the refuge of the barn nearby. Theses pastures can be crowded, but they are not necessarily so. These environments allow chickens to just be them, in a way that is certainly the most humane.

So there you have it: the moral arc of the universe, vis-a-vis industrial egg production.

Until next time, read your labels carefully, and be well!

The Great Kombucha Debacle—Again

A few years ago, the Foods For Living staff was drunk almost every day. What was the culprit behind this Dionysian disregard for propriety? Did the Board of Directors start a speakeasy next to the office? Were terrible conditions pushing dozens of employees into the bottle? Quite the opposite, actually.

OK, maybe no one was drunk. But crates of questionably-alcoholic Kombucha had become unsaleable overnight, and the staff reaped the benefits.

GT Dave's Synergy and GT's Kombucha product lines had long been popular at FFL. At that time, Kombucha—a vinegary, fermented tea—had not yet seized the mainstream. Kombucha was available in health food stores and co-ops, and that was about it. GT's Kombucha enjoyed a polarizing reputation, due to its incomparable unique flavor. This flavor was largely a result of fermentation within the drink.

As anyone who has done serious time knows, fermentation produces alcohol. It was always understood that Kombucha contained trace amounts of alcohol. But conventional wisdom said that the amount of alcohol was so small that it didn't need to be listed or considered. Then, in 2010, a consumer protection investigator with the Maine Department of Public Health called that into question.

Randy Trahan was at a Whole Foods in Portland, Maine, when he noticed some leakage on a bottle of the 'booch. Officials performed tests on a few bottles of the stuff at a food science lab, and found that alcohol was present in each, ranging from .5 percent ABV to 2.5 percent ABV. (This is just shy of the 2.8% ABV of MGD.)

An unregulated alcoholic beverage lying in wait, in coolers across the nation? This wouldn't do. The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (which sounds like about the most fun-ruining, squarest bureau in the world) got involved, as they do when a beverage's ABV is above .5 percent. Soon after, Whole Foods voluntarily pulled their stock of GT's Kombucha, deciding the risk wasn't worth it. Other retailers followed suit. While customers nationwide went crazy without their favorite elixir, the back rooms of health food stores everywhere devolved into deranged 'booch-fueled bacchanalia. Or rather, people consumed single bottles of the stuff over hours and experienced no detectable effects.

GT Dave, the mastermind behind the GT's brand, personally oversees Kombucha production to this day. He says that he drinks between 1.5 and 2 gallons of Kombucha a day, testing every batch to ensure quality. I can only imagine how much he drank while reformulating his signature brew to reduce the alcohol content.

After much investigation into their brewing process, the folks at GT's discovered that changing the ratio of various probiotics used in production would reduce the alcohol content. GT's rolled out a new product line called "Enlightenment." The resulting product was a bit smoother than the original. While many found it to be deliciously different, there were those that fumed over the brand's new flavor.

Meanwhile, Whole Foods lost nearly $75M in sales due to the Kombucha debacle.

Refusing to compromise the product that made them famous, GT's quickly followed up the Enlightened product with a "Classic" formula. The new labeling clearly identified the product as containing alcohol. As an officially-sanctioned alcoholic drink, the Classic formula is less widely available than its smoother cousin. Is there really a noticeable difference in taste? You can buy one of each at your local Foods For Living, drink them back to back, and be the judge.

But now, in 2015, history is repeating itself. Many brands of Kombucha have successful wrestled some market share for themselves as the drink goes mainstream. But the mean old Bureau of No Fun has been testing again, and it looks like a few Kombucha manufacturers are over that .5% ABV line. This can result in fines, or even reclassification, which means no more selling in some grocery stores, and higher taxes.

Will Kombucha manufacturers be able to change their methods quickly enough for Uncle Sam, or successfully lobby for leniency? Time will tell. But since GT's had its Kombuchapocalypse years ago, they will be just fine.

Be well!

What You May Have Missed in Food News

Another seven revolutions of the earth, another 1/52 of this year behind us. Did anything happen in the world of food? You bet. How about health? Yup. Let's get to it.

Science is funny. You can take something mundane, sprinkle some science on it, and presto—funny. Mystery Science Theater 3000 without the Science? You'd never watch that. Take the science out of a science fair, and all you've got is a fair. I don't like show hogs and I don't trust those rides. Or the people who run them. Where were we? Oh, right. Science.

Hypothesis: the less necessary the application of science, the funnier it is when applied.

For example, a new study from the American Chemical Society has determined how to make the perfect grilled cheese sandwich. This was obviously necessary, since making a successful grilled cheese sandy is very difficult and a worldwide problem(?) Anyhow, the important things to know are:

• the meltability of a cheese is a function of its pH. (pH, you may remember, refers to how acidic  or basic something is.) A cheese in the 5.3-5.5 range will melt perfectly. 
• The sharper cheeses have lower pH, and break apart when heated. While these more acidic cheeses lack meltability, they are delicious. 
• For a perfect grilled cheese, simply use a meltable cheese for your base and add a sharper cheese, to taste. 
• The most meltable cheeses are: gouda, gruyere, and manchego. Also, if you're the sort of person who likes boring food, you could try American. You should probably stop by the Foods For Living deli case and start scoping out your cheese candidates.  

Killing with KINDness

Don't you love when a health food company goes on the war path?

Gee, I'm not sure that's really a thing, you may be thinking. Well, maybe it wasn't...until now.

This saga began last April, when the FDA kindly asked granola bar manufacturer KIND to stop using the term "healthy" on their snacks. (No word on whether Budweiser can continue using the word "beer.")

You can read the letter, in which I imagine the FDA flipping the hood of KIND's bars and pointing to various smoking components and saying "that ain't a good sign," right here. The FDA's contention was that KIND bars are full of fat, and not in a good way.

KIND contends that the fat in their bars comes primarily from nuts, and nut fats are one of the good guys. Not so much, countered the FDA.

"But, like, what does 'healthy' even meeeeean?" keened KIND in a petition last Tuesday. "We can't say whether we're healthy or not if you don't, like, even define 'healthy,' FDA. Your guidelines are like 20 years old. The fats in our nuts are like salmon and avocado fats, and those are apparently fine with you guys.*"

*dramatic recreation

As of press time, the FDA had said squat in return.

Sea-Aged Beer

A Canadian diver named Jon Crouse was combing the briny depth, as is his wont, when he discovered a bottle of beer submerged beneath a few feet of muck (and about 10 feet of water). The bottle was obviously old. Upon investigation, experts are dating sometime in the early 1870s.

The beer came from Canadian Brewery Alexander Keith's—which is still in business. This may be the oldest extant beer in the world.

Stillwell, a local beer retailer, has offered to do an analysis of the beer to determine the components. If they can pin down what's in the beer, and in what proportions, it's possible someone could brew a faithful recreation of an 1870s ale, much the way Dogfish Head did with Midas Touch.

Singing the Praises of Patti's Pies

A thing that can happen in America is: you can be a YouTube star reviewing a pie created by soul superstar Patti Labelle's pie company, Patti's Pies, and gain a lot of traction. Millions of views on YouTube later, you can get a call from Patti herself, thanking you for driving sales of her pies higher than the crescendo of some Patti LaBelle song. You can charm her during this call, and get an invitation to hang out. You can have a great hangout, and have her offer you a spot as co-host on a new cooking show. If you're James Wright Chanel, an LA hairdresser, good singer, and killer pie reviewer, that can happen to you.


Gambling For Friendship

You know how this good-for-nothing generation can't seem to keep its face out of a screen for more than two seconds? What's that? You're 58, or 68, and you're the same way? Oh, well, gosh...er, I meant no offense. I didn't know you even read the blog, mom.

For me, dinner with friends has always been a tad sacred. I like that we're out, together. As my friends continue to start families and desert our friendship their time becomes more precious, a meal out can be a unique opportunity to have a real conversation, some realtime, non-digital laughs, and watch each other eat. I'm lucky (or discerning): my friends don't spend dinner time on their cell phones. But if they did besmirch our time together with Instagram, I might propose what some desperate millennials are doing: "phone stacking."

Phone stacking is simple. At the outset of a meal, you and your dinner companions stack your phones in a pile, face down. You then talk to each other like people did in the early 90s and before. If someone reaches for their phone, they pay for the entire meal. Done. It's like the Thunderdome except more brutal. The fact that this "game" is enough of a trend to make it onto the internet makes me so happy, and I hope you feel the same.

See you next time, and be well!

The Sordid History of Swiss Cheese

300 B.C. Somewhere in what is now Switzerland: three Celts make camp for the night in the dark of a pine forest. One snaps branches from a nearby tree while others empty milk from crude hide bladders into a small wooden bucket. One pine branch becomes a spit to hold the bucket, the other branch a stirring rod. They stir the curds and nod approvingly to one another at the smell. They are making Swiss cheese, long before the birth of Switzerland, or even Julius Caesar, and some 2300 years before the grand opening of Foods For Living.

When Julius Caesar did come to power, Rome was already a monolithic power, but Jules would take the idea of imperialism and run with it in an unprecedented way. By this time, cheese was already a big deal. The "barbarian" tribes of Gaul and their ilk had long been making soft cheeses. Rome was ahead of the game in that regard, using rennet (a complex of enzymes made in the stomach of ruminant animals) to make hard, age-friendly cheeses. As Rome adopted its own cheese-making culture (wealthy Romans often had a dedicated cheese kitchen), it was also stomping through the known world. The cheese traveled with the legions, who in turn ate local cheeses, and much cheese was enjoyed all around, even if things otherwise were less splendid.

Nevertheless, the barbarians could only make the softest of cheeses, if one were to grant these fireside bucket curds the status of cheese at all. Says Roman scholar Pliny the Elder:

"It is a remarkable circumstance that the barbarous nations which subsist on milk for so long have been for so many ages either ignorant of the merits of cheese, or else have totally disregarded it; and yet they understand how to thicken milk and from there form an acrid kind of liquid with a pleasant flavor."

I love that guy.

The Swiss, or rather the people who lived in what's now Switzerland, had been farming the land since at least 5300 B.C. No one knows when exactly they began stirring interesting additions into their milk, but they probably started using rennet sometime in the 14th or 15th centuries. Apparently, it took about fifteen centuries for Roman cheese technology to reach Switzerland—or else a dash of calf stomach was just a hard sell, and they were slow to cave.

By the mid-1500s, Swiss cheese was very much a thing, given as wedding gifts, and revered around Europe. It should be noted this second that "Swiss cheese" is what we call Swiss cheese, but the Swiss, being Swiss, make many cheeses, and do not call them all "Swiss cheese." What we know as "Swiss cheese" is called Emmental in Europe.

In reality, there have been over a thousand varieties of Swiss cheese. But, as Americans, our familiarity with Swiss cheese begins with Emmental and ends with Gruyere. Why?

Enter the world of the Swiss Cheese Illuminati.

At the dawn of World War I, concerns about food supplies became paramount. The Association of Swiss Cheese Export Firms was established by the Swiss government, and given sole authority over who could export Swiss cheese and who could not.  Later, the ASCEF became the Swiss Cheese Union; it had exclusive control over the entire Swiss dairy industry, which was totally fine and caused no problems or controversy. Just kidding. Predictably, many were unhappy with their increasingly draconian stewardship of Swiss cheese.

The Swiss Cheese Union expanded their reach into quality control as well as export rights monitoring. They were determined to bring Swiss cheese back to its pre-war glory, and plug any holes in the country's cheese reputation.

Fast forward to the 1960s, when industrial technology had increased the scale and, accordingly, the export side of the Swiss cheese industry. By this point, there was a labyrinthine web of government control, subsidy, and delegation surrounding the cheese making, milk, and cheese trading industries, all of whom were back in some way by the Cheese Union (which was still a pseudo-government body).

As the Cheese Union strove to keep the industry afloat and maintain quality, rigorous standards were introduced. These standards included shaving down the available variety of cheeses for manufacture into just 14 varieties. Of those 14, only a couple were actually, truly endorsed for graded manufacture and export. You can probably guess which two of the thousand Swiss cheeses those were: yup, Emmental and Gruyere. A third, lesser-known-abroad cheese, Sbrinz, was also endorsed and marketed by the Swiss Cheese Union, but that's it. All the other cheeses would have to find their way from the farmers themselves to customers abroad. In a pre-internet age, that was tough.

Swiss cheese did benefit from the "Starbucks effect," however. The cheese was of uniform quality anywhere you encountered it. There is comfort in consistency.

The Swiss Cheese Union was huge. It had offices in downtown NYC, and it was essentially an arm of the Swiss government. It blanketed American magazines and newspapers with adverts assuring people they could rely upon (and only upon) officially-endorsed Swiss cheese to be amazing. As a result, the Swiss cheese industry boomed, despite being pared abroad into 2 or 3 "endorsed" varieties.

But every super-successful, influential organization eventually has its Wolf of Wall Street moment. The Swiss Cheese Union's came in 1996, when its practice of taking bribes and playing fast and loose with trade laws was finally revealed to the world. If you can read it, you can even take in a Swiss-language scandal story here about the Union selling processed cheese to some Italians (and mislabeling it) while accepting some bribes on the side.

The World Trade Organization got a bee in its bonnet about all this. There was the requisite scandal, and in 1999, the Cheese Union was rendered asunder by the Swiss government.

These days, Swiss cheese makers are back in top, pre-Union form. There are a few hundred varieties of Swiss cheese available these days, all marketed by the cheese makers themselves. Thousands of years of cheese innovation and cross-cultural mashups almost got waylaid for keeps by a state run cartel. (Well, I guess that did happen for about 85 years.) But all's well that ends well. Go eat some weird Swiss cheese and celebrate freedom.

Be well.