I don’t care for fruit. I don’t why exactly, maybe it’s the skin or the fact that fruit flavors never seem to mix well with any other kind of food. When I was growing up, nobody in the house ate much fruit either, ironic, because the fruit was so good and plentiful in California. Sad, I know.

 When my daughter was born, she practically came out of the chute a fruitarian. She loved it all and could never get enough. Now, I had evolved to a point in my life where good nutrition really meant something to me, not only as a new mother but as an individual. As I watched her (skeptically at first) day after day, year after year, gobble down all those bowls of fruit I was serving her, it began to haunt me that this food group was decidedly missing from my diet. I read the University of Berkeley Wellness Letter and Nutrition Action regularly and I know the USDA food pyramid from memory. Fruit is a big part of a nutritious diet. So, what was I going to do about it?

 I started small with the fruits I liked best: melons. Up here in the north, you can’t get melons all year. So, I just went on from there. Peanut butter is great for lunch when you are a vegetarian. By happy coincidence, it goes great with fruit. Another problem solved. Fruit is pretty low in calories. Score two for my side. Sometimes when popping a piece of fruit in my mouth at my noon-day meal I would be pleasantly surprised. I found myself saying: “Hey, this isn’t bad and I getting something my body really needs, that’s pretty great.” Over time, I developed this attitude that, I may not love fruit but it doesn’t suck.

 Maybe there is some good-for-you food that you have felt pretty ambivalent about too. Maybe you’ll never love it but if you find a way to incorporate it into your daily diet you might find it doesn’t suck either.