There was a restaurant that I would go to with my parents that served cheese sandwiches-- not even grilled-- with no side dish, just cheese and white bread. I loved it so much. The sandwich was actually piled high with cheese just like they describe in menus. It was three inches thick of sliced cheese on white bread. It was a pure rush.

I picked all the cheese in the salad. I put too much parmesan on my spaghetti, I blanketed it so you could barely see the sauce. I wrapped a slice around microwaved hot dogs. I ate it right off the plastic wrap as an after school snack. My parents only said something when they noticed they were running low, and then it was more about using it all up. After all, it's only a dairy product and I was definitely getting enough calcium, what was the harm?

When I was seven I was diagnosed with asthma and my parents took me to an allergist. It turned out that I was allergic to cheese because it was a mold product. My greatest love had turned on me. It seduced me in order to destroy me from within. Cheese became my mother's archenemy. She hated cheese more than the bratty children who stepped on my hands in jump-around carnival amusements. No pizza for you, Adria. No handy snacks. No Kraft dinner. No Smartfood. No Land-o-Lakes. You know it will make you sick. I was already sick. I had a chronic need for a deadly substance.

What is there to live for when life's greatest pleasures are continually denied! I snuck that cheese every chance I could. At every sleepover party, how about a little snack you cheese starved little girl? How about a Ritz topped with cheap cheez from a can? Yes I sunk that low. I ate the pink and orange cheese from a plastic jar with a plastic knife. I ate it and gorged myself, and sometimes I would pay a very personal and unpleasant price for my covert cheese eating sins. When one eats nothing but cheese and starch products topped off with soda all day at a family barbecue, an easy digestive process will not follow. Nothing will follow for about three days. My mother would interrogate me, what have you been eating? I don't think it was fresh fruit and vegetables. A little fiber wouldn't kill you now and again.

After a stint like this I would swear off cheese. I tried to find pleasure in other foods. But the smell and the look of it was more than I could handle. The fact is that cheese is mighty hard to avoid. Do you go a week without someone suggesting ordering a pizza? It must be the single most popular food in the US. Cheese is everywhere in restaurants. Cheese on chicken, on burgers, on fries, on veggies, on fried fish sandwiches, on soup, in soup, on baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, twice baked potatoes, potato wedges, potato skins, on tortilla chips, in dip, in spread, in salad dressing, in salad, in casseroles, in cakes and Danish! You can squeeze cheese into every nook and cranny in the American diet. Cheese doesn't make food taste better, it makes it taste like cheese, which tastes better than all other food.

It is through my relationship with cheese that I have learned the real meaning of good things in moderation: enjoy good things as much as you can and eventually you will reach a physical limit, which will moderate the amount you consume.