Well why are you buying cheese pre-sliced? If you opt for pre-sliced cheese, and pre-peeled oranges, and whatever then yeah you're going to need more packaging and you're being wasteful.
If you buy a block of cheese then you don't need as much packaging, and you can wrap it in just paper. I'm sure you can manage the slicing part yourself when you get it home.
Unfortunately from what I see where I live they use plastic coated paper to wrap cheese or meat, and this is not recyclable either as paper or as plastic. It's used because it keeps any moisture or fat inside, won't not stick to the product making it harder to peel off, and allows the package to be heat sealed which is what most customers want.
If you go to dutch market and buy a piece of old cheese they will cut it with a steel wire even though the have knives around. You can imagine slicing it for a sandwich would be challenging with a wire
Ancedata: the lady who works at the cafe near my mom's house sliced her finger clean off making a sandwich. They managed to reattach it and (I've heard) it's healing nicely.
It's not a problem I have because the supermarket sells sliced cheese. Besides that the problem is not with the cheese in slices per se but with the packaging (see top of the thread) and unsliced cheese is also sold in plastic.
We really like 'hard' cheeses and hard is literally rock hard. Getting it sliced is practical. Even adults have trouble slicing cheese that hard themselves (I can do it, but then again, I used to run a metal workshop ;) ).
Well, hard cheeses you usually use a normal knife to take pieces from. Semi-hard/normal hard, the ones you usually buy in block form, especially in families, are easily sliced with a "cheese slicer" (lacking the proper name, if it has it). Kids can for sure use a cheese slicer, in many countries, cheese blocks is the most common (by far) way to consume cheese.
I live in the place where those cheeses originate (Netherlands), and there is no way you're going to properly slice old Dutch with a cheese slicer, if it works at all.
I can see an argument for why buying bread sliced is nonsense, ditto with Salami (though some of that Hungarian stuff is quite impressive, wonder how it would fare on the Rockwell test) and other stuff people slice up for sandwiches.
> and there is no way you're going to properly slice old Dutch with a cheese slicer, if it works at all.
For sure, and I agree. But AFAIK, hard cheeses like that is not what most people eat and what you find in most supermarkets (outside of Netherlands). And fine, if the cheese is so hard to slice yourself, wrap a couple of slices in some plastic. Problem is when everything, including semi-hard cheese, is double wrapped in plastic.
It was just an example, really. Not sure why everyone is so bothered by the fact that the cheese is sold sliced, besides the blocks are sold in plastic as well so it wouldn't change much.
> why everyone is so bothered by the fact that the cheese is sold sliced
Because it's unnecessary. For example, where I live, the cheese package is plastic first, and then in-between each slice there is a sheet of plastic. Then since the packages only contain 10 slices, people buy multiple of them.
It's a complete waste when there could be just one layer of plastic, or people could buy block cheese (unless, they live in Netherlands, only buy hard cheese and who's name start with "j" and ends with "acquesm")
The point is try to figure out how we can replace plastic with something better, in the cases where it makes sense to replace it. Common things like cheese-packaging makes sense to care about, as all other plastic packaging.
Every kind of food processing or pre-processing is essentially not necessary. That doesn't mean that people will stop doing it. But we're concentrating on the packaging, not on what is bought and sliced cheese can be sold just fine without 'spacers' especially when it is old... (It is the younger cheeses that tend to stick)
So, it is simple: replace plastic with paper. Done. Ditto for almost everything else packaged in plastic. Besides, the plastic that ends up getting burned releases very poisonous compounds into the eco-system (dioxins).
In the eighties and before people cutting themselves while cutting hard cheese was pretty common.
Just like you can cut your meats yourself, you can slice your bread yourself and so on this is mostly a convenience, but in case of hard cheese if you've never tried slicing Old Dutch you maybe should try it first.
Even the stores can have trouble slicing it. Anyway, no need to take my word, just buy some if you can and give it a shot, and let me know how it worked out. Using a cheese slicer isn't going to work either, you'll need a very sharp knife and a steady hand and it will take a lot of force.
I usually do not have much trouble cutting Old Amsterdam with a cheese slicer. But perhaps it's is not old enough ;).
When we lived in Germany, the cheese counter people in the supermarket we terrified when I asked for Old Amsterdam, worried that I'd want to have it sliced ;).
"Old Amsterdam" is for tourists, and isn't old. It is actually a cheese that didn't exist until a few years ago, and actually simply is medium aged Gouda. But that doesn't sell nearly as well.
Next time you are in NL (anywhere will do), find a half decent cheese shop and get yourself some "overjargige kaas", you'll love it if you like Old Amsterdam.
"Old Amsterdam" is for tourists, and isn't old. [...] Next time you are in NL (anywhere will do),
I have been born and raised in The Netherlands. I have eaten plenty of old Dutch cheeses during my lifetime.
The thing is, Old Amsterdam is one of the few old(-tasting) Dutch cheeses that you can easily get abroad, such as in rural German, which is where I picked up that admittedly bad habit ;).
Well why are you buying cheese pre-sliced? If you opt for pre-sliced cheese, and pre-peeled oranges, and whatever then yeah you're going to need more packaging and you're being wasteful.
If you buy a block of cheese then you don't need as much packaging, and you can wrap it in just paper. I'm sure you can manage the slicing part yourself when you get it home.