Just a note, qdog, but the peanut butter issue is well founded. I actually had a neighbor who died from it. Agree with you on the fad notion. Low fat, low or no animal products, high carb diet that is the USDA's paradigm of the last several decades being one.
Tim, I'm sorry, I can't offer much either. Just to say, there are some producers of alpine cheeses - and less so now than before, with numbers continuing to dwindle - who make up their rennet daily, so they do not use sodium benzoate. But absent that, the preservative is necessary. If it helps, the amount of sodium benzoate actually consumed in finished cheese is really tiny - I can't recall precisely, but I seem to recall one producer talking about parts per billion in finished cheese.