this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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to be fair that wheel in the picture is $1000+. i imagine it wouldn't be that difficult to make a shitty fake one at a fraction of the cost that looks exactly the same, sell it for the same $1000+, and no one but a connoisseur of high end cheese would be able to taste a difference
If nobody but a connoisseur can tell the difference, why exactly should we, the consumers, care that their monopoly on this type of cheese has competition at a lower price?
Isn't capitalism supposed to "breed innovation" in a "free market" built upon "competition" and "supply and demand"?
if you're a consumer who doesn't care, you're probably not buying a $1000 cheese wheel because it looks like the "real" $1000 cheese. you're buying the cheaper product that's not counterfeited to pretend to be something it's not
But that's the point. If it tastes the same to everyone but those who make it their obsession, it's got nothing to do with not caring. Whether you can afford to drop $1000 on a cheese wheel or not doesn't factor into it.
Cheese isn't branding and marketing, it's coagulated milk. If a "counterfeiter" has figured out how to make the same cheese then they're not making counterfeit cheese, they're making the same cheese without the monopoly, branding, and price gouging.
The very thing capitalism is supposed to reward, but doesn't in the bastardised protectionist form that exists in reality.
Why should consumers care about the financial exploitation of a monopoly? Restaurants that buy this regularly will happily buy a $500 wheel from someone else if it tastes the same to everyone but the snobbiest of cheese snobs, I'm sure.
This is DRM for physical products because they want to protect their monopoly and monopolistic prices.
i mean i'm not simping for capitalism here, but i think you're confusing what a "monopoly" is. parmigiano-reggiano cheese is a legally protected term designating that only cheeses produced in certain areas can be labeled as such. no one's saying you can't copy the cheese and sell your own products, just that you can't label it parmigiano reggiano if you're not making it in those areas. people pay extra for it because it has higher standards of quality. the problem with counterfeiters is they're basically making whatever quality they feel like and passing it off as the more expensive version.
"monopoly" means a company is taking over the entire market by snuffing out competition, not even allowing anyone to get a foothold in producing a competing product (see google). that's not what's happening with this cheese. some people buy the $1000 cheese. many, many more people buy just plain "parmesan" because it's good enough for their needs. neither is the "wrong" choice, but there are definitely choices. but surely you can agree that false advertising can't be a good thing?
https://www.thespruceeats.com/parmesan-vs-parmigiano-591198
There's a ton of cheap Parmesan cheese out there which isn't intentionally defrauding people.
First, things like Parmesan cheese are as much cultural products as they are commercial products, so calling parmesan to something done outside of that cultural context is cultural appropriation - you can make parmersan style cheese but you have the moral duty to make it clear it's not the actual thing. Second, a free market is only a free market if there's transparency about the products, including their origin.
Do you see how silly that argument is?
It's coagulated milk, the only culture is the bacteria. This isn't a family recipe being made in a farmstead by 5 people who personally milk the cows themself. It's a factory. With rows upon rows of cheese produced every day, worth millions of $. Stored in giant warehouses and transported all around the world. It's big business, not culture. Just because they have great marketing doesn't mean they're producing any form of culture.
The same applies to the Scottish whisky trade and Champagne in France. If it's so cultural then locals would be making the stuff, but they're not, it's a large monopolistic business. In the same way the scotch whisky trade is becoming monopolised by the likes of Chivas via Pernod Ricard.
If you genuinely believe that this is cultural appropriation then you should be having a word with the giant corporations that have put so much legislation around these products that it's near impossible for small independent competitors to try their hand at it. If it were truly culture there would be a thriving craft scene like there is with beer.
Short answer: rich people are dumb and spend their money on dumb shit to flex on us poors
Fake real cheese? Like the stuff that comes in a can?
You might be thinking of peaches.
Cheese comes from a can. It was put there by a man. In a factory, downtown!
If I had my little way, I'd eat cheese every day
Movin' to the country, gonna eat a lot of cheeses...
exactly. pasteurized processed cheese food product