The Most Nutritious Way to Serve This Food
With grains, bread, noodles, beans, nuts, or vegetables to add the essential amino acids miss-
ing from these foods, “complete” their proteins, and make them more nutritionally valuable.
Diets That May Restrict or Exclude This Food
Antiflatulence diet
Controlled-fat, low-cholesterol diet
Lactose- and galactose-free diet (lactose, a disaccharide [double sugar] is composed of one
unit of galactose and one unit of glucose)
Low-calcium diet (for patients with kidney disease)
Sucrose-free diet (processed cheese)
Buying This Food
Look for: Cheese stored in a refrigerated case. Check the date on the package.
Avoid: Any cheese with mold that is not an integral part of the food.
Storing This Food
Refrigerate all cheese except unopened canned cheeses (such as Camembert in tins) or grated
cheeses treated with preservatives and labeled to show that they can be kept outside the
refrigerator. Some sealed packages of processed cheeses can be stored at room temperature
but must be refrigerated once the package is opened.
Wrap cheeses tightly to protect them from contamination by other microorganisms in
the air and to keep them from drying out. Well-wrapped, refrigerated hard cheeses that have
not been cut or sliced will keep for up to six months; sliced hard cheeses will keep for about
two weeks. Soft cheeses (cottage cheese, ricotta, cream cheese, and Neufchatel) should be
used within five to seven days. Use all packaged or processed cheeses by the date stamped
on the package.
Throw out moldy cheese (unless the mold is an integral part of the cheese, as with blue
cheese or Stilton).
Preparing This Food
To grate cheese, chill the cheese so it won’t stick to the grater.
The molecules that give cheese its taste and aroma are largely immobilized when the
cheese is cold. When serving cheese with fruit or crackers, bring it to room temperature to
activate these molecules.
Cheese