Cheese if you please...

An article in this morning's NY Metro (the free newspaper) titled "Italian's Blood Curdles at Kraft's Parmesan Plan" talks about Kraft's plan to cut the aging process of Parmigiano-Reggiano from the norm of 10 months (the U.S. standard) to a year, down to a mere 6 months. The article makes mention of how insulted the Italians are about this idea--and how though cost is cut and profit is marked up, the overall quality of the cheese is simply not there. They go so far as to say that cheese that is aged only 6 months is not Parmigiano cheese. I'd have to agree with them--but I'm wondering if this step--and the claim that Kraft makes that they "have found excellent consumer acceptance of the new product" says anything about American's blind acceptance of mass consumption. If products are packaged the same, sold the same, and the price is the same or less than what we're used to paying for an item, does that mean that our taste has changed? Or that we're willing to have our tastes determined for us conglomerate corportations? Though the article is about cheese--something I'm fairly certain that the average American doesn't give a second though to in the course of a day--I believe it says something more about the culture of consumerism that the U.S. is a part of and how willing we are, as a culture, to stop questioning the powers that be.