Velveeta scarcity a cheesy drama?

Talk about the cheese stands alone.

Make that the “pasteurized cheese product.”

Velveeta, America’s much beloved cheesestuff sold by the melty, mellow, yellow brick, is - Nooooooo! - supposedly in short supply, it was recently announced.

Ad Age broke this news - and with it hearts of fatties everywhere, especially here in the Natural State, where we dip plenty of chips in the less than all-natural product.

Exactly what could cause such a shortage? It couldn’t be a milk issue, right? Is there even any milk in Velveeta? (Why, yes, a few forms, actually: milk, milkfat, whey, milk protein concentrate, whey protein concentrate, who knew?)

Or what if, much worse, America’s facing a serious preservatives scarcity? No, anything but that! What if they take our Twinkies away? Again?

To explain this potentially crippling crisis, Ad Age quoted an email from Kraft publicist Jody Moore.

“Given the incredible popularity of Velveeta this time of year, it is possible consumers may not be able to find their favorite product on store shelves over the next couple of weeks,” Moore said. “Our retail customers are aware of the situation and we expect it to be a short-term issue.”

The article mentioned a possible plant situation being responsible. Moore wouldn’t give more than this: “I can tell you there is a combination of factors involved, but the driver is really the high demand” and “we really haven’t heard much from consumers about it at all. It’s a short-term issue amplified by the fact that this is a key time for the brand.”

If that’s the case, the headline here is: “Americans eat too much Velveeta.” Big flabby shoulder shrug. Yeah, we knew that.

What we don’t know is how are we going to go forward in our processed-food-shortened lives without our Velveeta-Ro-Tel-fortified resolve, especially right before what we fake fromage aficionados term “Snacktacular Sunday” (football fans call it the Super Bowl).

What a dreadful time to run low on a desired dip staple … or is it? Could its parent company be purposefully holding back inventory and driving up demand? In which case, how cheesed off will we be?

“It sounds ‘Krafted’ to me! I’m soooo cheesy,” responded a friend on Facebook when I checked in last week to see how people were surviving this low-cheese food spell.

But no one was suffering. In fact, my Facebook correspondents, whose locations ranged from North Little Rock to Malvern, reported store shelves being completely Velveeta-replete. Only one Little Rock friend reported her supermarket was down to dangerously low levels, with only a store-brand substitute and - horrors! - less-fattening 2-percent-milk Velveeta represented.

So for now, whew, we appear stocked and safe. But what do we do should these rations dwindle? What ever will we use in place of pasteurized cheese product?

Here’s a crazy idea in “queso” that happens: cheese.Chip in, email: [email protected] What’s in a Dame is a weekly report from the woman ’hood.