Cheese

[Troy]

The reason I ask, is because a buddy at work discovered that most, if not all commercial pizza makers use some form of "fake" cheese.

Are you saying that's the case for frozen pizzas? I've definitely found that to be true but I doubt that's true of takeout places. It's actually the opposite - if you are shopping for cheese at a chain grocery store (at least in the US) you probably can't even find the same quality of cheese they use at a pizza place. All of the major brand mozzarella cheese I've seen is part-skim which is also part bubblegum.

I had the hardest time finding a good place to buy whole low-moisture mozzarella. My Costco doesn't sell it. Trader Joe's has it but it's a little more than I like to spend on cheese. What I've found and like almost as much is sliced mozzarella from Gordon Food Service. Since it's sliced you can use it on chicken parmesan, or I also like mixing oregano into ground beef and making burgers with mozzarella, pizza sauce, and pepperoni fried up like bacon. When you want to shred the cheese you can just put the slices into a mini chopper. Gordon is midwest US only but I wouldn't be surprised if other foodservice outlets are good places to buy cheese (again almost everything in a supermarket is awful)

I also really like provolone mixed in with mozzarella. Again you're going to need a mini chopper, it doesn't come shredded.

Actually a lot of the takeout places use a blend of pizza cheese that has the fake cheese in it too. Even chains :\

I would guess the chains even more so. Mom and pop shops would be more likely to just go out, buy some cheese and shred it... Chains are going to try and set up a distribution network, the cheese will likely be pre-shredded, which leads to anti caking agents and preservatives, ect...
The more resources they get the more likely they are to start engineering the food to meet their conditions rather then the other way around.

You may be unpleasantly surprised.
Even a lot of mom'n'pop places get their common ingredients from food suppliers that deliver.
GFS, Sysco, etc.

A couple of years ago I was in Roscoe IL at some local pizza place. They had a sign about posted about the whole "pizza cheese" thing and how they proudly use REAL cheese.
I commented about it, in a positive way, and the lady told me the sign was old and they just never took it down

[Grizz]

I get a big bag of Kraft shredded Mozzarella and a bag of shredded White Cheddar, then I dump both into a Gallon ziplock bag and give it a good roll to mix 'em.  Get two or three pizzas out of em and the missus likes the mix.