There's No Such Thing as Nacho Cheese

Tasting it doesn't make it real
Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg
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Few things in this world should be taken for granted, including a particular fluorescent orange food called nacho cheese. Here's the truth: There’s no such thing.

This story begins months ago, while I was reporting the launch of Old El Paso’s new nacho cheese-flavored taco shells. These shells, the marketers bragged to me, have a “big, bold cheese taste,” which naturally led me to ask them to describe how it tasted—a topic they doggedly deflected: “We don’t get too much into detail about that because it is such a competitive category,” said the company's spokesman.