I brown-bag lunch to school and eat during classes, so my lunches are generally easy-and-fast, both in terms of eating and packing them. Including string cheese.
Normal cheese, in my experience, does not ‘string’ vertically or horizontally when peeled. String Cheese, such as Polly-O (the best brand, IMO), does. How and/or why?
String cheese is really just mozzarella. Pizza cheese, yes? If you extrude it during the cheesemaking process, or stretch it and spin it, then it gets stringy, and then it’s marketed as “string cheese”.
http://www.foodsubs.com/Chessoft.html#mozzarella
http://www.evitamins.com/healthnotes/healthnotes.asp?ContentID=1956002
String cheese is simply mozzerella cheese in a log shape. If you go to the store and buy a brick of regular whole milk mozzerella, you will see it can be “string cheesed” too. It is hard to peel strings off large bricks, but if cut into logs, it will happily string for you all day.
Only mozzerella cheese dows this. Perhaps because of the way it is made (boiled)? Perhaps mozzerella cheese is a great and terrible cheese? Who knows. I gobble first, ask questions later.
The real question is, why does it taste different when you just bite the log instead of peeling it? 
It just doesn’t make sense!
must…not…make…smartass…reply…
No no, go ahead, I enjoy smartass replies (especially if they’re witty).
It tastes different because in string form, there is much more surface area available to the taste buds, rather than jus taking a bite. Therefore it seems more salty and thus flavorful, as more taste receptors are stimulated more quickly.
At least that’s the explanation I’ve heard, and it matches what I know of physiology.
The next obvious question:
Why is commercial-grade mozzeralla “stringable”?
Duck Duck Goose implies that way the cheese is made is important: " If you extrude it during the cheesemaking process, or stretch it and spin it, then it gets stringy".
Can someone please elaborate why/how the manufacturing creates “strings”? Are other cheeses made the same way “stringy” ?