Taste Testing Mozzarella Cheese

One of the challenges of living in our post-industrial society is sorting through the amazing array of choices we have. Which is the best for each of us? That question applies to big-ticket purchases like cars as well as prosaic, everyday purchases like groceries. With cars it's well understood that a shopper should test-drive at least a few before buying. Such a comparison might only be checked once every several years, though. But how about groceries? How often do you buy a few of nearly the same thing and try them all? With groceries the costs are way lower than cars, yet I'll bet few people think of doing that very often. I know I don't. Hence the Beer Tasting 2022 project I started months ago. Recently I decided to apply the same idea to two different brands of mozzarella cheese.

I love mozzarella cheese. And as I've been cooking at home a lot more the past few years I buy it fairly regularly. There are several different brands I see at the grocery stores I usually shop. For years I've basically bought whichever one's at the store I happen to be at, or whichever one's on a small sale versus the other. Embedded in that habit is the assumption that the cheeses are equally good, so all I've got to solve for is price and convenience. But are the cheeses equally good? It's time to check!



To keep this comparison simple and apples-to-apples I bought two blocks of mozzarella cheese. One is the pseudo-Italian brand Galbani that Safeway carries, the other is Trader Joe's brand. (I call Galbani pseudo-Italian because while the label and all the advertising touts it as "Italy's #1 Cheese!" the fine print says what's sold here is made in the US.) I left pre-shredded cheese out of this comparison. I already know shredding it fresh from a block myself tastes better than pre-shredded. I did that comparison over a year ago; I just didn't write about it. These cheeses are also both the whole-milk variety rather than part-skim milk. That's another comparison I've already done. Buy the whole milk stuff, it's better!

These cheeses look virtually the same. The shapes of the blocks are slightly different, but once shredded the cheese is indistinguishable. It's the same color and texture. Of course, color is not the basis for choosing cheese. Taste is! So, how do they taste?

There's a clear difference in taste between these two. I was surprised because I thought they'd be close. Trader Joe's mozzarella is way better. TJ's has a creamier, very slightly nutty flavor. Galbani tastes like plastic. If I hadn't just opened the sealed package and shredded it by hand I would've though it came from a bag of shreds.

I invited Hawk to try the cheeses, as well. Without me telling her my opinion first, she made exactly the same observation I did.

"Are you going to throw the Galbani out?" she asked.

"No, it's not quite that bad," I said.

She agreed and offered to use it on a dish she was making. But then once she made it she said the flavor of the cheese was so poor she left that part of the meal uneaten. So maybe I will throw out the remainder of the 1-pound block. We're well enough off that we can afford to trash $5 of cheese we don't enjoy.

Negative Selling

Yesterday in a blog about the trials and tribulations of buying a mattress I recounted my frustration with a sales person who starting negging us. Folks who've been on the dating scene (or have read about it) anytime in the past 10 years know what negging is. But what about people who work in sales? In sales there is a useful technique called negative selling. It's very different from negging, though.

Negging, defined

Just a quick definition to make sure we're not talking past each other. Negging is a term coined by pickup artists (usually men) for using backhanded compliments as a form of emotional manipulation. A classic negging line would be, "Wow, you're way more interesting than I expected when I first saw you." There's clearly an insult here: they look like a dull person. The negger is combining an insult with a flirtatious remark to undermine the other person's confidence and lure them into seeking his approval.

Negative Selling, or "Unselling"

Most of the time selling techniques are what you'd call positive, or constructive. As a salesperson you're asking questions to understand your prospective customer's needs and you're explaining capabilities in your product and how they help solve those needs. Sometimes, though, the positive-constructive approach just isn't working. Your prospect isn't giving up much in the way of realistic needs and they're shooting down every value you're presenting. They may also be carping (repeatedly) about things like, "I don't get why it's so expensive." At that point you might try negative selling, or unselling.

With the technique of negative selling you agree with the customer's negative remarks. An example I might use in enterprise software sales is, "A lot of organizations buy this product for its security features, to prevent software supply chain intrusions. If security's not that important to your organization, this product might not be the right fit."

Unlike with negging, the purpose here isn't emotional manipulation. The purpose here is to qualify in or qualify out the prospect. I.e., figure out whether or not this prospect is worth continuing with. Many prospects are not! As a sales professional it's critical to understand where (and with whom) to spend your time and effort.

Where the mattress seller messed up

The mattress salesguy messed up in two ways. First, he made his negatives personalized to us, not the situation. That's a key difference between negging, in the slimy pickup artist sense, and negative selling in business. Second, his attempt at negative selling was mis-timed. We weren't dismissing his value-selling or carping about things beyond his control; we were still asking questions. When your sales prospect is still asking legit questions you are totally in positive-constructive selling still. Switching to negative selling prematurely is a power move that shuts down the prospect's questions and runs a big risk of pissing them off.

We were pissed off and left.