Re the 5 lb blocks they gave away on street corners out of the back of trucks about 20 years ago. What kind of cheese was it? Oh, and what the hell was the government doing with all that cheese anyway. And why the trucks?
I tried googling the history of government cheese, but all I get are links for some big hair band named “Government Cheese”, and tons of ironic references.
The food was given away because otherwise it would have spoiled. It was purchased IIRC as part of various farm subsidy programs. The government would purchase food produced by farmers that the market couldn’t otherwise absorb. The cheese I had was given in conjunction with other food assistance programs, e.g. food stamps. A friend of mine on disability and food stamps got it. It was an American-type cheese, but I imagine other cheeses may have been produced. I’m not aware of food being given away off trucks.
During the Reagan administration the cheese stored in government warehouses was given to the poor, those on food stamps and lots of other folks.
The cheese was there because of government subsidies to the dairy industry, started God only know when or why.
Forgot…the chees was mostly Wisconson cheddar, but could have come from any state because there was no labels on the individual packages.
The cases, however, did identify the origin.
The government has huge reserves of cheese and other dairy products, partly as a byproduct of the dairy price support programs. These are intended both as a market stockpile to ease market fluctuations, and (cheese being perishable) are used for public programs. I don’t think the military is allowed to use it, due to the lobbying of the Dairy Industry; I think the military has to buy their cheese on market.
A portion of the stockpiled cheese was turned over to state and local agencies for food aid. A lot of these agencies (e.g. local churches) didn’t demand any needs test - anyone who wanted to show up for a block of government cheese each month could do so. AFAIK abuse was not a big problem, due to the stigma of receiving 'welfare cheese". I ate some while visiting a friend in the 1980s. It was just your standard “American cheese” (AKA “Canadian Cheese” to you Canadians) which makes it a definite step above the “pasteurized process cheese food slices” many Americans buy from the brand name producers, but nothing special in the world of cheeses.
It made a hell of a grilled cheese sandwich, however.
It started long before Reagan. The government cheese we used to get when I was a kid in the '60s was yellow/orange American-cheese type stuff (as I recall, some kind of process cheese). It was not given away “off the backs of trucks,” you had to go pick it up at a depot or warehouse. We also go government mystery meat (spam-type stuff, plus a stringy kind of canned beef), rice, and powdered milk.
Ha! I haven’t heard of the band Government Cheese in years. Joe Elvis was (is?) a radio DJ here in Nashville.
One of the former members wrote a book called The Cheese Chronicles which is a definitive account of what life is like for a small quasi-famous band on tour. Excellent read.
On topic: My family aquired some of the cheese (through a really circuitous route, my mom was the county attorney for a small rural county that just happened to have a few blocks at the courthouse they needed to get rid of). KP is right, it was just standard American cheese…
‘American cheese’ in Canada is still ‘American cheese’, or ‘processed cheese’ (which it is presumably also called in the US). There are a lot of products where ‘American’ is translated to ‘Canadian’ for sale in Canada, but American cheese isn’t really one of them. Translating ‘American’ to ‘Canadian’ is kind of overused and often sounds corny, especially for something like ‘all-Canadian sandwich’, because ‘all-Canadian’ isn’t really a common expression. Presumably American cheese can’t be called ‘Canadian cheese’ because labelling restrictions would require the product to be manufactured in Canada, with Canadian-produced milk, in order to be called ‘Canadian’.
Process cheese in French is ‘fromage fondu’. Government cheese in French… well, I don’t think there’s Canadian government cheese, but I guess it would have to be called ‘fromage de chômage’. =)
Hmm, let’s see: goat’s cheese comes from goats; so government cheese… well, never let it be said that those politicians didn’t give their all to the nation 
Let me tell ya all about it… We were once a white collar middle class family.
Dad graduated with high honors. He was 50 when Reagan came along to divide and conquer the middle class. This cheese was one of the few foods we had to eat thanks to Reaganomics! His economic plans stole (money, tax breaks, quality of life) from the poor and gave to the rich! Let Nancy eat “emotional cake” today for the millions who lost everything under Tyrant Ronnie! If you prospered in those years, you prospered off ill-gotten gains (knowingly or unknowingly).
And that’s the way it was. The truth has to be known!
Jinx, haven’t you already been given a warning about making political postings in the General Questions forum?
From In Living Color’s skit, What If Archie Bunker Was Black?:
Archie: Edith! What’s fo’ dinner?
Edith: Oh, Archie, it’s your favorite! Macaroni and da government cheese!
Archie: Aw, geez, Edith! You know what da government cheese does to me! I spend more time on the throne than Queen Latifah!
What the hell is Canadian Cheese? Never heard of it.
For that matter, what’s American Cheese? Is that your word for cheddar?
Rick, a Canadian.
I don’t suppose there’s still Gov’t. Cheese waiting to be had, is there? I suppose we could always ask Lesko…
As a kid growing up in the early 80s, my family was on welfare and other gov’t assistance for a short spell. My mom brought home government cheese on a couple of occaisions for us, and the family universally disliked it. I recall it being much like processed american cheese, but even more rubbery, like bathroom silicon. It also had a funny chemical taste to it. Being poor starving kids that would swim a piranha-infested river just to get a corndog with Velveeta on it, it says a lot of the quality of government cheese that we refused to eat it.
Maybe so, but I cannot parse out my life. Do not deny me what I lived. The cheese was a critical piece of my life back then. I can still taste the cheese and hear them coming to take the house away from us… Tell the moderators to allow some leeway for post trama! - Jinx
Government cheese still exists as part of the WIC program for Women Infants & Children. This is a program to provide nutrition to low income, pregnant women and their children. Cheese, milk, eggs seem to be the basics provided.
Joe Elvis is on