You may have seen the recent media coverage of PCRM’s new cheese billboard, which we placed just outside Lambeau Field, where the Green Bay Packers play football. The billboard features the Grim Reaper and says: “Warning: Cheese Can Sack Your Health.” The ad is aimed at parents who have no idea that cheese may be the cause of their children’s ever-worsening weight problems—or their own weight and health problems, for that matter. Our original version put a cheesehead on the Grim Reaper, but the billboard vendor painted the cheesehead out after receiving threats of legal action from the cheesehead manufacturer.

Typical cheeses are around 70 percent fat, as a percentage of calories, and much of that fat is saturated fat—that is, “bad fat”—the kind that raises cholesterol levels. Ounce for ounce, cheese has about as much cholesterol as a typical steak, and is high in sodium, as well. It is hard to imagine a less healthful food.

Annual cheese consumption in America was only 3.8 pounds per person back when the USDA started keeping records in 1909. But fast-food chains and pizza places, aided and abetted by federal programs buying up cheese and dumping it into schools, have dramatically escalated cheese consumption. Today, Americans are eating roughly 34 pounds of it per person per year. If even one or two of those pounds stick each year, we would have explained the entire obesity problem in America.

Many people find it tough to set aside foods they are accustomed to. But breaking a cheese habit is one of the best favors you can do for your waistline—and your coronary arteries. The easiest way to break a habit is to take a three-week break—that is, no cheese at all for 21 days. At the end of that time, the spell will be broken, you’ll have lost a pound or two, you’ll feel better, and you’ll wonder why you were ever seduced by that Grim Reaper in the silly hat.