Eating right has always been a struggle for me. I was not well acclimated to vegetables as a small child, as my mother didn't care for them either. My father insisted we have a vegetable with every meal as I got older, but it almost always came in the form of either canned corn or green beans. I've gone most of my life avoiding the stuff, simply because I never liked the way it tasted. I don’t care if something is chock-full of vitamin A, C and calcium, I don’t care if it makes you live longer or feel stronger or fixes the budget deficit, I’ve got this hang-up wherein I won’t eat food if it doesn’t taste good to me.
In my defense, research shows humans are biologically hardwired to crave high-caloric foods. In prehistoric times, this drive wasn't such a bad thing. Calories, which were essential for survival, were hard to come by. They were in intermittent supply and we needed to be willing to work hard for them. This is why our senses go crazy in the presence of anything sweet, fatty, or salty. Conversely, a bitter flavor is often an indicator that a substance is poisonous or inedible. So how do I go about retraining my taste buds as an adult? Is it hopeless?
My plan is simple, I'm going introduce more vegetables into my diet slowly. I'm going to explore a wide variety of edible plant matter and toy with varies methods of preparation (I know and can eat just about anything if smothered in enough garlic) and I'll stick it in smoothies masked with fruit. If this all goes well, I'll try munching on some raw vegetables every so often and decrease the sugar load in my morning smoothies and pray somehow I will acquire a taste for these foods and be forever cured of my veggie phobia.
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