Cheese is gross.

Hold on — let me finish before you let out a loud  scoff and turn the page.

I’m not saying cheese always tastes bad.

I like a bagel with cream cheese or a slice of pizza as much as the next person.

Mixed up with other yummy stuff, cheese isn’t so bad.

But to all those folks with cheese obsessions, I’m just saying … it’s a really gross idea. I mean, do you know how cheese is made?

Everyone knows it’s like sort-of-solid-milk-but-not-really, but what is it actually?

As someone who is extremely unenthusiastic about cheese and sick of people raving on and on about it, I have looked into this issue with care.

Let me summarize the process:

Step one. A massive metal tub is filled with milk and is then slowly heated up to some temperature in between “lukewarm” and “hot.”

Then it’s cooled back down.

Then, some live bacteria is thrown in the tub, which is heated and cooled again. Weird, but okay.

Step two. Rennet, an enzyme that comes from mammal stomachs, is sprayed into the tub.

After 30  minutes, the tub of milk becomes a tub of slimy, chunky pieces of sour, semi-solid-milk. Appetizing.

Step three. The chunky milk curd is left to sit for a while and is then  heated, which makes it oozy, foggy, yellow liquid called whey.

The whey is drained from the tub.

Then, the remaining chunks of curdy milk globs are squished together and continually flipped until they form a large, rectangular mass of slimy “cheese” chunks.

Step four. The chunks are shaped into more appetizing  looking blocks of cheese, and then they are plopped in the fridge for two months.

That is cheese: stinky, bacteria-filled blocks of hardened, many-month-old milk chunks that were repeatedly heated and cooled in a big metal vat.

Think about that when you put spoonfuls of cottage cheese in your mouth.

Or when you heat up a liquidy bowl of cheap, mass-produced mac and cheese.

Or when you scold  someone for choosing  not to cover  their bowls of pasta in large  amounts of cheese flakes.

Oh, and by the way, according to a 2016 research study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10.5 percent of French people hate cheese.