Yes, you read that correctly. According to a piece in the Wall Street Journal, there’s a cheese surplus in the United States, and Americans would need to eat three more pounds of cheese annually to help reduce it. Now, before you open your mouth and start doing shots of Cheez Whiz (seriously, no, don't do that), your doctor might disagree with adding more cheddar and mozzarella to the 36 pounds of cheese Americans already eat per year. But hey, you’re doing it for the farmers! Pass the Jarlsberg! Poutine for breakfast! What would you like on your double cheeseburger? Triple cheese? You got it.
It turns out that the U.S. has more than just a cheese glut going on: there’s an excess of dairy, poultry and grains due to an increase in production a couple years ago when there was a strong export demand and prices were running high. But with the dollar’s current strength, some agricultural products aren’t being sold overseas so quickly, and the flood of milk is hard to stop. The American dairy industry is expected to produce a record-breaking 212.4 billion pounds of milk this year, while cheesemakers are making and putting another record-breaking 1.19 billion pounds of cheese in cold-storage freezers.
With cheese in storage, cheesemakers can bide their time and wait for demand and prices to rise, but consumers will still note lower prices the next time they're out shopping. For example, the WSJ says, “Retail prices for cheese were down 4.3 percent in April from a year earlier, according to market-research firm IRI.” A slightly fatter wallet should really help you do your part with those extra three pounds—just blame your gut on the glut.