Eat verification wheel.
this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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Big Cheese is in charge of everything.
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?
There's a ton of cheap Parmesan cheese out there which isn't intentionally defrauding people.
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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!
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Presumably the counterfeit cheese doesn't have these chips. Therefore I'll make sure to only purchase counterfeit cheese.
How good is this counterfeit cheese if you have to invest cheese DRM?
At what point does it stop being a counterfeit cheese and became a real cheese made somewhere outside the origin protection?
I assume it's like the whole Champagne only comes from Champagne. Are their other sparkling wines that taste as good, I'm sure. But they want to sell a name.
Kentucky tried to do the same with Bourbon Whiskey, saying if it was made outside of Kentucky you'd have to call it something else, but I don't believe that stuck
You are correct, it did not stick, but by US law Bourbon does have to be made in the US. Associating alcohols to a region has always been a tedious argument, but distilled alcohol is especially silly. For things like Champagne they can claim things like the soil of the area impacts the flavor (Vidalia onions), the culture of specific grapes in the region are important (this isolated variety of grapes are only cultivated here), or maybe something in the air contributes to the process (Belgian sours), but Bourbon just requires it be made with at least 51% corn and stored in a charred oak barrel.
Bourbon may have originated from Kentucky there is nothing about Kentucky or the US that impacts the process. I can make IPAs without being in the UK and I can make Berliner Weisse without going to Germany, I see no difference with Bourbon.
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It's more a self-defense measure - while there are perfectly good counterfeit cheeses out there, if someone gets a really crappy piece or there's food poisoning traced back to a counterfeit cheese this lets them prove it wasn't their fault, thus avoiding a hit to the brand reputation and/or avoid liability.
Not exactly a great solution imho, but it does make sense from a certain perspective. AFAIK they're sticking the chips in the wax/rind not the cheese itself, which does improve things slightly.
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DRM: Dairy Rind Management
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This made my contempt for the microchip conspiracists curdle.
I imagine organized crime would probably be big into counterfeiting like that. It's less risky than drugs, doesn't bring as much heat. I know there have been more than one exposure of olive oil fuckery, mixing lower grade and other oils in. So counterfeiting fancy cured meats and cheeses would make a lot of sense. The Albanians, Calabrians, Sicilians, Sardinians, and whomever else, it sounds right up their alley.
I know in the US liquor counterfeiting has long been a thing, mixing in rotgut booze into fancy bottles. Done by organized crime. People have this romanticized vision of organized crime because all of the movies. But truth be told, they are pieces of fucking shit. They are parasites, they make things cost more and work less well. You pay more for less, and people get hurt, so those that add no value can make money. With the exception of course of bootlegging around bans on substances, in which case they do provide a valuable service.
The problem with parm is that "fake parm" can just be literally the exact same product, but just made outside the borders of the legally defined region, or even made within the region with the same methods, but not under the control of "big cheese". It can still be a high quality product.
Counterfeit honey is a big problem. Honey is mostly glucose and fructose, which you can just buy. You can detect a lack of the pollen you'd expect in real honey, but that only makes it so that you can thin out real stuff. There's other methods to detect it, but it's on ongoing arms race. Buy honey from local beekeepers you trust, if you can. P.s., there idea that local honey helps with allergies is bunk because allergies are typically caused by windborne pollen, which bees dont collect.
Maple syrup has similar issues.
Seafood and truffles are commonly "fake", as in substituted with cheaper stuff.
Not "counterfeit", but a similar problem in Mexico is that the cartels have gotten into the avocado industry.
You just aren't allowed to call it literally "Parmigiano Reggiano", no one is stopping you from making it. "Reggiano" means "(of/from) Reggio (Emilia, a city)", I don't see why it's a problem to forbid calling it that if it's not made there-ish.
"Grana" is the generic name for that kind of cheese. Its use is not protected
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I make maple syrup, and much of it has wildly different taste, the only ingredient is maple sap, but it doesn't all taste like the syrup in stores. I'm afraid when selling it I will be accused of faking it too, even though other producers will tell you that as well.
I do know someone that bought a gallon at a farmer's market that turned out to be some nasty corn syrup abomination, guy disappeared. As to fake honey, honey has a particular taste, as does maple syrup, even the stuff that's different, it's more than just sugar, just as you can't well fake fruit juice with sugar water. Mapoline is easily identifiable, I suspect honey would be the same, but I think your cases is probably more them mixing real honey with syrups and the like?
Because artificial flavors, known as natural flavors to the US government, (as they were naturally made in a lab from chemicals, after all isn't everything part of god's plan?) are a poor substitute for real ones, in my experience. Artificial strawberry, blueberry, Vanilla, mapoline, and so forth are all easily identifiable, and abominations to anyone used to the real thing.
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Big cheese was never going to let anyone else get away with a slice of their cheddar.
Really? Cheese DRM? What's next, they hit you with a DMCA claiming it's nacho cheeze?
I don't care if Big Parm tracks me. As long as they don't stop making parmigiano reggiano they can do whatever they like to me.
This being lemmy, you might want to try the open-source alternative, Grana Padano
Funny I always use Grana Padano because I'm poor now I will start saying is because I support OSS
OK, but how does this even work? Is it a tiny NFC tag or something? Does your body digest it, or does it just pass through you because it's really small, like a single microplastic?
And during the time it passes through you, you're briefly authentic parmesan cheese.
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Basically passes through, yes
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That's... a lot of fucking cheese...
mods this one right here
i don't care what you do with your cheese behind closed doors and i will fight to the death for your right to do it but please be less creepy about it
Do you want The String Cheese Incident? Because this is how you get The String Cheese Incident.
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I can't believe they're putting chips in my cheese dip.
When every letter counts...
Ingredients: cows milk, salt, rennet, microchips..
Chips in my cheese? Could you toss in some ram, hdd and a gpu plz?
Shady trenchcoat figure on a street corner: “Hey kid, wanna buy some cheese? I got the stuff that’ll make you mouse for days.”
I wish they showed what it looks like. I honestly can't understand how this works. Almost all parm i have is grated so wouldn't it be noticeable during the grating process? Or is it that small it avoids being chopped up.
It might go all the way to the top, but it definitely comes out the bottom.
Are they really trying to combat counterfeiters, or are they trying to permanently tag & geolocate all their cheese enthusiasts?
I will eat so much that the cheese-lords will be able to track me across the globe.
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