In the United States; is it illegal to use a single serve wrapped slice of Kraft cheese as a postcard?
This is assuming it's sealed and has a proper stamp. Post cards are more expensive than cheese. And who doesn't like cheese right?
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This would be prohibited by the USPS:
5 Perishable Matter
51 Definition
511 General Definitions
Perishable matter is anything that can deteriorate in the mail and thereby lose value, create a health hazard, or cause an obnoxious odor, nuisance, or disturbance, under ordinary mailing conditions. Mailable perishable matter may be sent at the mailer’s own risk when it is packaged as required and when it can be delivered within appropriate and reasonable time limits to prevent deterioration. Examples of perishable matter include mailable types of live animals, food items, and plants.
Full list of prohibited items
American cheese doesn't look like it'll ever deteriorate.
When I was younger, we moved around a lot, and as side effect of that, we paid for a storage unit to hold less frequently used stuff. Around the time I started high school, we managed to buy a house, and moved everything from the storage unit into our home. In it there was a picnic basket that I had never seen before. I remember looking inside and finding a horrible smelling bag of "bread" which was actually a black liquid with lumps in it. There was also some individually wrapped cheese slices which visually speaking were indistinguishable from any I could buy in the store today.
Does Kraft "cheese" really count as food though?
I'm going to die on this hill: Cheeses like this are real food. Typically real cheese is one of if not the first ingredient. They are made from cheese, milk, and an emulsifying agent. It's literally cheese sauce with a higher melting point. You can make it yourself it's really easy, you can use non standard cheeses for it like provolone or Gouda, and the only real difference would be in preservatives
You're absolutely right about this. It's super easy to take a block of high-quality cheddar cheese and melt it with some sodium citrate to make the creamiest cheese dip you've ever eaten. And you can make your own sodium citrate with just lemon juice and baking soda
And deli style American cheeses, with lower milk content and thus a firmer, more cheese-like consistency, make the perfect cheese for a good burger. Melty but not stringy.
Agreed. The “it’s not really food” idea came from labeling requirements that to be labeled cheese, it needs a certain percentage of its ingredients to be cheese. Once upon a time, American cheese slices were made from the offcuts of cheddar, but the popularity of American cheese means that there literally aren’t enough offcuts to be economical… you’d have to make cheddar just to turn it into American cheese.
But guess what cheddar is made from? Milk. Turns out, when making American cheese, it’s possible to skip the aging and culturing process and simply go straight from milk into the cheese slice we know, with less than the mandated amount of aged cheddar added. That means they had to write something like cheese product instead of calling it cheese directly.
But it is still food! In fact, it’s still American cheese… skipping a step in the recipe to get a very similar if not identical result doesn’t change what it is! It uses the same raw ingredients, for crying out loud! It’s still the same stuff!
It's certainly perishable, doesn't have to be food
Yet people received their Pink sauce...
Interesting. So the potato thing is technically against their rules, but they just do it anyways I guess?
Mailable perishable matter may be sent at the mailer’s own risk
The regulation you cited does not strictly prohibit the mailing of "perishable items".
Who said perishable items were "strictly prohibited?" Slapping a stamp on a kraft single would not meet the criteria laid out in the second half of the sentence you left out of your quote.
was going to say perishable was the first thing that came to my mind.