A ball in red wax, a foil triangle, a white round studded with herbs. On the shelf they look like the same kind of thing. Two of them are made in opposite ways.
They look alike, but they split into two kinds
Individually wrapped cheeses sit at similar sizes and similar prices, so nothing on the shelf suggests a difference. Yet some of them are milk set into curd and finished there, while others are cheese that was already made, melted down and set again. The first needs only milk, a coagulant and salt; the second adds a melting step. That one difference decides the taste, the texture and how long it keeps.
The ball in red wax is real cheese
That small waxed ball is made the way Dutch edam is made: milk set into curd, the curd cut, a bath in brine, then ripening. Nothing is melted and reset, so it is not a processed cheese. The wax is not decoration either — it is a shrunken version of how whole edam wheels were sealed for the sea voyage.
The cheese that method comes from, and its cousin:
The foil triangle is processed cheese
The wedge in foil is a different animal. Cheese that already existed is melted, a few salts are stirred in, and it sets again — which is why it survives outside the fridge and spreads with a knife. Few people know its name began as a joke in a First World War trench.
The herb-studded white round is a fresh cheese
The soft white cheese shot through with garlic and herbs is an unaged fresh cheese with flavour worked into it. It resembles cream cheese but starts somewhere else — and it exists at all because a newspaper printed something that was not true.
Others in the same fresh-cheese seat:
One was invented for children
The soft white cheese in a square of foil was created in 1966 as the first cheese aimed at children — the category itself began there. Milk and cream make up most of it, so it is very mild, and it too belongs on the melted-and-reset side. It sells especially well across the Middle East and Asia.
One line on the back settles it
The food-type line on the back of the pack states whether you are holding natural cheese or processed cheese. The front of the pack cannot tell you; this line can. It is worth glancing at the first item in the ingredients too, to see whether milk comes first or something else does.
None of which makes processed cheese bad
Melting and resetting was invented to make cheese keep, and it is the reason cheese travelled widely before refrigeration was reliable. Melting smoothly, costing little and never failing are real virtues. The point is only to know which of the two you are buying.