I just enjoyed my smoothie of choice – one orange, a cup or so of strawberries and a few blueberries thrown into a blender with a cup of ice and 1% milk. By the time I disposed of the orange peelings and strawberry stems, returned the milk and remaining strawberries and blueberries to the fridge and took a glass from the cupboard, it was ready to pour. And I had enough left over to put into the freezer for some iced smoothie tomorrow.

No, this is not a promotion for a blender, but for fresh fruits and vegetables – not only because they’re good for you, which of course they are, but because they’re just good! My aim is to encourage people to speak of fresh produce with the same ecstasy they now reserve for plate-sized grilled steaks, double cheeseburgers, piping hot French fries and smooth, rich chocolate ice cream.

• Consider the abundant color of fresh produce. When you enter a grocery store, your eyes are immediately drawn to the produce section. Is there any more colorful aisle – with its multiple shades of yellow, orange, red, purple and green? Compare that to the meat aisle with its bank of red meat and white chicken and fish, edible only after you’ve turned them to a brown color.

• Consider the variety of flavors. In the early summer here in the Midwest, berries, watermelon and cantaloupe are plentiful and sweet. Later we’ll enjoy honey-sweet Colorado peaches, looking forward to juicy, crisp apples in the fall and Vitamin-C laden grapefruit and oranges through the winter. Even with the short growing season in the Midwest, we can expect not only sweet corn from the farm fields but carrots, beans, beets, black-eyed peas and tomatoes from backyard gardens. When did you ever hear of “steak” in season? How boring!

• Consider their availability. For all the complaints we may have about “the world today,” it’s possible to enjoy fresh or frozen vegetables from all over the world like never before.

• Consider their cost. Side by side on a recent grocery store flyer were New York strip steaks at $5.99 per pound and green seedless grapes for $.99 per pound. Ice Cream Bars were $.70 each on sale, compared to a pound of cherries for $2.99, on sale.

Both the ice cream bars and the cherries could be considered a sweet treat. The chart below shows the difference not only in fat and calories but nutritional value. Why choose brown and white when red is so much more colorful – and less fattening and more nutritious?

	2 Snickers ice cream bars	One cup of cherries
Cost	$1.40	$1.67
Weight	134 g	138 g
Calories	280	87
Fat	30 g	0 g
Cholesterol	30 g	0 g
Sodium	160 mg	0 mg
Fiber	2 g	3 g
Sugars	40 mg	18 mg
Protein	8 mg	1 mg
Vitamin A	4%	2%
Vitamin C	0%	16%
Calcium	12%	2%
Iron	0%	3%

It’s no wonder Eve was tempted by a piece of fruit in the Garden of Eden! She had been promised it would make her wise; she also saw it was “good for food and pleasant to the eye.”

Maybe if we were told good food was forbidden – like salty fries and rich ice cream with chocolate sauce – it would be more attractive to us.

Maybe we’d look at each other and confess, “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m indulging in fruit salad tonight!”