“Nacho Cheese” Is Whatever You Want It To Be

The little-known “Stadium Nacho,” which is a refined blend of cheddar and Romano cheeses, with an insouciant hint of brand marketing for Madden NFL. (photo: Paxton Holley)

Those of us who grew up with orange-tinted fingers and salt-cured lips from spending too much time feeding at the Dorito trough know what “nacho” cheese is, or at least we know what it tastes like. But the fact is that, unlike most other well-known cheese varieties, there is no actual definition for what constitutes the cheese we call nacho.

This new piece from Bloomberg takes a hard look at this vaguely defined dairy item that is nowhere on the FDA’s list of requirements for more than 70 cheese varieties, from Asiago to Swiss.

Okay, so there is no FDA standard for nacho cheese, but surely the prepared food industry that loves slapping the nacho name on its products must have some sort of general guidelines.

Nope.

Bloomberg’s Venessa Wong tried to get a definition from Old El Paso, which recently launched nacho cheese-flavored taco shells.

A rep for General Mills says that the cheese flavor in the OEP shells is “based on what consumers are used to and what they believe nacho cheese flavor is.”

So, reading between the lines, he seems to mean whatever tastes the most like a Dorito. But not quite, as Old El Paso uses cheddar and blue cheeses while PepsiCo says that Doritos are coated with a mix of cheddar and Romano cheeses. Meanwhile, Pringles uses a cheddar, Romano, and parmesan blend.

The ineffable nature of nacho was confirmed by the manager of cheese education and training at the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, who tells Bloomberg, “There really is not a Nacho Cheese per se… There might be some jarred cheese blends on the market that say ‘nacho cheese,’ but again, these are blends that are meant to heat up and dip chips into.”

So now the next time you’re at a party and your friend says something about nacho cheese, you can be the one that goes, “Did you know there really is no such thing as nacho cheese?” right before everyone walks away from you for being that person.