The Curious Case of the Wisconsin Cheese Fraud

Is it considered fraud to claim that there's real mozzarella cheese in Bagel Bites pizza snacks when it's not 100% mozzarella cheese?

Apparently so, if you ask the woman who sued Kraft Heinz for allegedly deceiving and misleading the consumers since 1985.

Really dough?

Let's shove the pandemic, the racial crisis, and the global meltdown aside and turn our focus on the more important issue of cheese fraud!

What is Bagel Bites?

Bagel bites is a brand of frozen snack invented by Bob Mosher and Stanley Garczynski in 1985. These tiny pizza snacks were all the rage back in the 1980s and still have a cult following up to this day.

Cheese Fraud

If you look at the box of Bagel Bites, it says the mini bagels contain mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce. Nothing wrong with that. It does seem to have cheese and tomato sauce in them, going by what's printed on the box.

But it also claimed that the snack is made with real cheese. If you see that "Real Dairy" seal, it must be true, right?

I'm not a cheese connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination, but it never occurred to me that each piece of Bagel Bites has 100% mozzarella cheese in there. I'd be extremely surprised if that's truly the case.

If you think for one second that the mozzarella in Bagel Bites is pure mozzarella cheese then you're just setting yourself up for disappointment. When it comes to frozen snacks, expectations should be set at the minimum as a default.

The Plot Thickens

One important thing to point out here is that the woman who filed a lawsuit against Kraft Heinz is from Wisconsin. That little info alone strengthens her claims because, well, Wisconsin folks know their cheese.

Don't believe me?

Wisconsin is the only state that requires cheesemakers to be licensed. This means taking courses, apprenticing, and taking a written test to be a cheesemaker.

Advanced cheesemakers who want to take their cheesemaking skills to god-level status can take the Master Cheesemaker Program.

Only in Wisconsin.

So, the plaintiff just wants truth in advertising. In that aspect, I'm on her side. Consumers deserve better.

So what does the cheese lady want Kraft Heinz to do?

She wants the mozzarella cheese in Bagels Bites to be labeled as imitation mozzarella cheese.

Why? Because Wisconsin and federal regulations require that mozzarella cheese with food starch (used in place of milk) must be labeled as imitation mozzarella cheese.

It's the cheese law, y'all!

Although Kraft Heinz has yet to comment on the matter, I think I know what their response would be, seeing that there's a similar suit filed in New York, which was withdrawn to make way for the Wisconsin version, because it makes better sense for the case to be set in a state where more than a billion pounds of mozzarella are made. (Now, if the issue is about the bagels, there's no better place than New York.)

Lawyers from Kraft Heinz argued that SOME mozzarella in the cheese blend that they use as an ingredient in Bagel Bites is not "imitation mozzarella" under federal law.

For me, the mere mention of cheese blend screams fake cheese. But for the sake of transparency, let's look at the ingredients of Bagel Bites' cheese blend.

Bagel Halves (Enriched Flour [Wheat Flour, Enzyme, Ascorbic Acid, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid], Water, Salt, Invert Cane Syrup, Yeast, Soybean Oil), Topping (Cheese Blend [Part-Skim Mozzarella Cheese (Part-Skim Milk, Cheese Cultures, Salt, Enzymes), Modified Food Starch, Skim Milk]), Sauce (Water, Tomato Paste, Invert Cane Syrup, Modified Food Starch, Salt, Methyl Cellulose, Citric Acid, Potassium Chloride, Ammonium Chloride, Spice, Yeast Extract, Natural Flavor, Calcium Lactate), Water, Invert Cane Syrup.Contains: Wheat, Milk.

Do the ingredients make the cheese blend an imitation cheese? The presence of modified food starch seems to say so.

But I'm pretty sure Kraft Heinz will find ways to make these ingredients sound like real cheese.

Ironic Cheese Twist

In 2010, Bagel Bites launched an ad campaign against Totino's claiming that its Pizza Rolls use mozzarella cheese substitute. In comparison, Bagel Bites use real mozzarella cheese.

Now, Bagel Bites is being called out for using imitation cheese. It took a decade for cheese karma to kick in, but it kicked in nonetheless. Totino's must be rolling on the dough laughing its ass off.