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As for its taste, Southworth conceded that the spread had never been in the same league as a fine English Stilton. But it hadn’t pretended, even wanted to be. In the laboratories at Kraft, in fact, Cheez Whiz had been designed to have the mildest flavor possible for the broadest public appeal. Upon its release on July 1, 1953, the advertising emphasized its expediency, not its taste: “Cheese treats QUICK. Spoon it, heat it, spread it.”

Nonetheless, in his kitchen that day, Southworth knew that something had changed. Staring at the label, parsing the list of ingredients, he eventually found the culprit, though not without some effort. There were 27 items listed in all, starting with the watery by-product of milk called whey, taking him through canola oil, corn syrup, and an additive called milk protein concentrate, which manufacturers had begun importing from other countries as a cost-cutting alternative to the higher-priced powdered milk produced by American dairies. One crucial ingredient was missing, however. From its earliest days, Cheez Whiz always contained real cheese. Real cheese gave it class and legitimacy, Southworth said, not to mention flavor. Now, he discovered, not only was cheese no longer prominently listed as an ingredient, it wasn’t listed at all.

Not surprisingly, Kraft kept this change to itself. I couldn’t find any public discussion of it even nine years later, when Southworth related his story to me. So during a visit to Kraft’s headquarters in 2011, I asked if he was right, if Kraft in fact had taken the cheese out of Cheez Whiz. Actually, a spokeswoman told me, there was still some cheese left in the formula, just not as much as there used to be. When I asked how much, she declined to say. It no longer appeared on the label, she added, because Kraft — in attempting to simplify its long lists of ingredients — had switched from citing components, like cheese, to listing their parts, like milk. “We made adjustments in dairy sourcing that resulted in less cheese being used,” she told me. “However, with any reformulation, we work hard to ensure that the product continues to deliver the taste that our consumers expect.”