It depends but technically yes. American cheese is pretty simple, one or multiple cheeses blended with sodium citrate and some milk to create a very smoothly melting cheese. I actually made some myself last night by melting a bunch of very sharp cheddar cheese into some milk and adding a few slices of a decent American cheese to get the sodium citrate. I basically made a really good borderline cheese whiz for the sandwiches I made.

Kraft Singles, (which is what everyone likely has in mind for plastic fake cheese) however don't contain enough cheese as an ingredient to call the final product an actual cheese, there is a lot of milk powder added in that tips the ratios into cheese product territory.

American cheese without the colorant, thus perfectly healthy

Made from white cheddar instead of yellow cheddar. Only difference is no annetto.

It's a good grilled cheese cheese, and the standard cheese on Cuban Cheese Toast here. Taste slightly sharper than the yellow one. Good also for queso dip in a pinch. There is also a Swiss flavor white American cheese, that also gets used because it melts better than real Swiss. Not good.

And no they aren't cheese, though made of mostly cheese, they are "pasteurized processed cheese food".

It's a prepared cheese product! My uncle used to work at a factory that made it so I know their process.

It was only about 40% cheese, and the cheese utilized was a blend of the bits left over from making things like cheese sticks. This was combined with milk, milk proteins, and several emulsifiers to keep it from separating into oil and solids as it solidifies and again if it's melted.

Even the US won't allow it to be called cheese. It's called a "pasteurized prepared cheese product" because it doesn't contain enough cheese to legally call itself cheese or any variant of processed cheese.