It's a fact that there is only one real cheese country in the world: The netherlands. Many people outside of The Netherlands often refer to the Dutch as "cheese-heads". While this could be taken as an offense, we mostly just laugh about it. Funny fact is that us Dutchies actually used to have a tool called a "cheese-head" which was used to shape the cheese in the traditional form as you know it. There are some rumors that in the Middle Ages the farmers in The Netherlands used these "cheese-heads" as helmets when going to war. The enemy could easily spot an army of "cheese-heads" approaching from far.

The soil we have in The Netherlands has always been great for cattle-breeding. For over 2000 years us dutchies have been working to create more farmland by taking back land from the North Sea. We used windmills to soak up the water and then we build huge dikes to prevent the water from flooding back onto the newly reclaimed dry land. The dry land gained from the North Sea is called a "polder". As we speak almost half of The Netherlands is below sea level. You can imagine what would happen if any of our dikes would collapse. That would be some serious bad news.

The Netherlands is known for it's many cows and it's dilicious milk. Way back in time someone must have discovered that when milk turns sour, the white curds tastes good. Discoveries indicate that Dutch people were already making cheese as early as two centuries before Christ. Trading cheese is something that has existed since the Middle Ages. Around 1100 bargemen from The Netherlands paid their tolls with cheese in countries like Germany.

For centuries it was the Dutch women who usually were busy making cheese. Nowadays over 98% of all Dutch cheese is being produced in modern creameries. The Netherlands produces over 630 million kilo's of cheese, of which around 500 million kilo's is exported to other countries. As the world's largest exporter of cheese, we actually take the name "cheese-heads" for granted, as it could also be considered as an honorary nickname.