Let's get the obvious question out of the way: why American cheese?

For the philosophical argument, I defer to greater minds such as those of J. Kenji López-Alt and Kat Kinsman, who rise in defense of the ubiquitous, much-detested cheese product. "It is my moral and ethical imperative to tell you that breakfast would be a lesser beast in the absence of American cheese," writes Kinsman. "All cheese is processed," writes López-Alt—cheese only seems like a gift from god, he reasons, but in reality requires human intervention. American cheese is no different, so what's all the fuss about?

There are dissenters, of course. "If cheese is 'milk's leap towards immortality,'" objects one particularly fiery writer from the site Organic Authority, "then pasteurized processed cheese product is milk's deal with the devil—a complete transformation into a shell of its former self, utterly stripped [of] soul and substance."

Leaving aside this debate, I'd prefer to narrow our field of American-cheese inquiry to just three words: grilled cheese sandwich. That is why American cheese. Also burgers, I guess. The short-order cooks at Waffle House make a convincing case every time they serve up a bowl of cheese grits; I'm reliably informed, too, that at least one old woman in Italy finishes her pots of risotto with a slice of American cheese, because it "brings it all together." And what else should New York City food-cart vendors put on a classic egg-and-cheese roll—gorgonzola? GTFO.

Not only is American cheese unique in its capacity for melting, it represents a proud history, created in the early 20th century as a way to use up scraps left over from the cheese-making process, or to repurpose cheese that was otherwise less than perfect. James L. Kraft's idea was to melt that rejected cheese down, add a stabilizer—and bang, Mssr. Kraft was bouncing down the road toward his eponymous Singles. His "process cheese product," as it's now called, would come to be defined as "a mild, meltable, and stable concoction of natural cheese bits mixed with emulsifying agents to make, in the law of the land, 'a homogeneous plastic mass.'" ("Plastic" in the older adjectival sense, of course: "capable of being molded or modeled." Not that this is great for American cheese's branding.)

And that, friends, is the story of American cheese: one of wastelessness and ingenuity. It is not necessarily a story of great flavor, but flavor is sort of beside the point when it comes to American cheese—mostly it's about the meltability.

Unless you make your American cheese at home, in which case you have access to a wide range of flavors. And it's shockingly easy.