Whey

Tina Knudsen opened an artisan cheese and meat shop in Manchester, Iowa nearly one year ago.

Cheese and Whey was kind of my dream to start my business and bring artisan cheese and charcuterie meats to Manchester," Knudsen said.

The idea of coming in and helping educate people was my main goal.

The owner of the multi-unit commercial property that her store is situated in came to her with a proposition to buy the whole thing and changed her plans.

When you milk a cow and it has curds of milk, so there's a certain percentage of the milk that's just plain old H2O.

When you make cheese, so you separate the curds by making cheese, the process of making cheese, you separate the curds from the whey, W-H-E-Y, And if they make the cheese, and all the Kurds were used up to make the cheese, so the way that's left, minatera is part of it, and it's only milchik midi rabon.

We at Machman like the opinion that plain way is still milchik minatera.

That's called, the Gemara calls it mecholov.

after you took out the curds from the milk to make cheese, so what's left is the water, is the H2O, so the Mishnah calls it Mecholav.

So the Rishonim have an expression, after you have the whey and you make cheese from the whey, a second batch of cheese, then what's left is Me-Mecholav.

It's a lower degree, has less...

It's more watery, more watery.

I mean, imagine using...

I don't know, like whey or something instead of like hyper-concentrated milk, just like a whey liquid that's like, this is W-H-E-Y.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like a really pulled back.

So the Gemara in Masech Eschul, the Yedperek tells us, what's called Cholav? Milk is called Cholav.

And what's not called Cholav? Whey.

Way is not considered, that's the official English translation of Mecholav, Mecholav, we call way, the watery part, so to speak, of the milk, is not considered to be Cholav.

What does that mean for us practically? So I imagine maybe some of you know more about milking the cheese process than myself, because I know very, very little.

Big Pillow is behind everything.

[laughs] Uh, I guess, you know, protein is an interesting example here as well because this kind of newfound cultural obsession that we've been talking about is now beginning to affect the underlying commodity market, right? Whey used to be a relatively low-value byproduct of cheese making, but now the demand for it is so strong that producers are having to build new capacity.

And you know, your, your reporting has shown that whey prices have risen dramatically in the la- in, in the last few years.

What do you think happens when our cultural fixations begin to reshape the industries that are responsible for producing the things that we all consume?

Then the concentrated raw materials are weighed, blended, and enclosed in gelatin or plant-based shells.

Weighed, W-H-E-Y.

E-D.

Way.

World.

Wayne's World, thank you.

Whey, whey, W-H-E-Y is Wayne's.

So many motherfuckers out there eating protein like it's Wayne's World out there.

[laughs]

... and he slipped over, and everyone laughed, and a group of people nearby kind of, "Whey," that kind of thing, yeah?

Yeah, yeah.

I, I mean, if you're gonna be at a football fan park, that, you, you, you have to expect that kind of reaction.