A Cheese Sandwich to Save the Heartland, But Not the Heart

This week, we learned of the latest chain restaurant contrivance to challenge waistband technology: Denny’s has created a mammoth morsel of a cholesterol-rocketing, fat-flapping mistake of a meal. Ladies and gentlemen, Denny’s Fried Cheese Melt Sandwich is not the answer, regardless of the question.

This summer, some of our colleagues attended the USDA and DOJ hearings on unfair competition in the dairy industry—you know, cheese biz. A theme of the day was that dairy farmers, no matter the size of their herd, don’t get paid enough for their milk to make ends meet. So, what does this have to do with that slapdash of a fried cheese sandwich with fried cheese, cheese fries, and a cheese-coated candy shell?

The most common response from the milk industry (the processors that buy milk from dairy farmers and bring it to market in the form of milk, cheese, and other dairy products) is that the answer to low farm prices is more consumption. For years, they’ve said: put some more cheese on it and the farmers will get more money.

So is Denny’s new sandwich really an attempt to support America’s struggling dairy farmers? Too bad it doesn’t work that way in a market where one processing company controls 40 percent of the national market for milk.

A farmer’s share of one pound of cheddar cheese is $1.42, even though consumers pay over $4, according to the National Farmers Union.

That kind of concentrated market power means that the farmer’s share of the consumer food dollar has been shrinking for years—and cheese is a classic example.

So, just like lots of the other food issues we write about, we can say that this sandwich is just one more example of how we can’t shop our way out of the problems faced by struggling dairy farmers.

-Rich Bindell