The main ingredients of cheetos
Cornmeal is one of the most important ingredients used in cheetos. Frito-Lay claims that the cornmeal they use comes from corn which they help grow sustainably, all over the USA. We will never know if this is true, because when asked where Frito-Lay gets their cheese, they were not willing to disclose their source. According to the "World of Corn", in the United States, 15.1 billion bushels of corn were produced in 2017. One bushel of corn is 56 pounds, so as you can see, the USA has a considerable amount of corn that companies like Frito-Lay can use for their cornmeal.
Vegetable oil is another essential ingredient for all chips products. This is the type of oil that Frito-Lay use to fry their Cheetos, like many other chips manufacturers do. They use vegetable oils that use locally grown vegetables, so as to reduce their carbon footprint. A reason for the reliance on vegetable oil may be because it is cheaper that many other types of oil. The use of vegetable oil over other types of oil also generates good publicity. It has been found that vegetable oil can increase metabolism in obese people, helping them get fitter and it also has a lower risk of heart disease. Although it is not entirely healthy, it can mislead people into thinking that what they are consuming is good for them and therefore convince them to consume more.
Milk is also a very important part of the Cheetos manufacturing process. Cheetos focus heavily on the cheese flavour, so a lot of milk is needed to produce a lot of cheese which is turned into cheese seasoning. According to Kimberly Scott, the director of communications at PepsiCo, Cheetos uses 10 million pounds of cheese seasoning per year. That is a lot of cheese, just in the US. To make enough cheese for this amount of cheese seasoning requires 11 million gallons of milk. That equals to roughly 2,200 gallons of milk per cow.
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Salt is another one of the main tastemakers involved in the cheetos manufacturing process. It is mixed into the cheese power before it is applied to the cheetos that have been fried. Frito-Lay have not mentioned how they get their salt, but they have made efforts to use healthier salt in their chips products so as to reduce the amount of sodium in the salt, therefore reducing the risk of heart attacks.