>>>The whole "soft is nice" in cheeses is a marketing gimmick to sell more water at the price of cheese. Same goes for bacon, ham, bread, sausage and beer.
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>Agree re bacon and injected product, though you can get dry cured bacon with no injection and no preservatives now- sort of a 50-year time warp and the per kg price actually is cheaper than the colored processed stuff once you deduct the water.
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>But cheese? IMO soft cheeses have a distinct flavor and character very different from firmer or block cheeses. I like it. I even like the smelly cheese that was a popular characterization of the French in the 1960s: in Alsace I encountered the Munster variety (not Munster as labeled in the US, but as per the Alsatian original) and quite enjoy the whole experience.

I meant the soft version of hard cheeses, sold as "baby this or that cheese" - soft mozzarella, edamer, trapist etc.

Young cheeses are a completely separate category. I was actually missing all the variety while I was in the US - there was only cottage, ricotta and sometimes queso fresco and that was it. Here we have at least a dozen of those in any place; if you drive just 20 minutes away, at least four of these are different. And no skimming, most of them are full fat.

Once in Germany I tried a slice of cheese which stank of... manure. I almost wanted to return it but they goaded me into eating it. Two days later I didn't want to eat any other cheese.