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).
