American cheese
American cheese is a type of processed cheese. It can be orange, yellow, or white in color, is mild and faintly sweet in flavor, has a medium-firm consistency, and has a very low melting point. American cheese was originally only white in color—as it had been made from a blend of cheeses —however, the modern version can also be artificially colored to a yellowish hue. Today’s American cheese is generally industrially manufactured from a set of ingredients such as one or more cheeses, milk, whey, milkfat, milk protein concentrate, whey protein concentrate, saturated oil, emulsifiers, and salt. Because its ingredients differ so much from those of "unprocessed"/raw/natural cheeses, American cheese can not be legally sold under the name "cheese" in the US. Instead, federal laws mandate that it be labeled as "processed cheese", "cheese product", "cheese food", etc. As a result, sometimes even the
word "cheese" is absent, altogether, from the product's labeling in favor of, e.g., "American slices" or "American singles".