Don’t like broccoli, kale or spinach? Fear not. You can train your brain to crave vegetables. One of my best friends as I was growing up ate nothing unless came in a bag wrapped in paper from a drive through. He’s an unhealthy adult now. While I was never that extreme as a 17 year old, I certainly did not incorporate many foods of color. Rather, I leaned on beans, rice, chicken and egg whites as my healthy staples. Today, I eat every color known to man in the form of fruits and vegetables. It didn’t happen for me over night. It was the result of incrementally training over time. I didn’t realize it as it was happening, but there was considerable science behind my behavioral patterns. From Men’s Fitness:

You can teach your brain’s rewards centers to crave healthier, lower calorie foods over junk, researchers at Harvard and Tufts U recently found. And it’s a lot easier than you think.

I’m frankly doubting the easier part, but this magazine is at the very least good at sensationalizing the truth. I read on and learned of the studies.

For six months, obese adults followed the scientifically designed, “iDiet”

Ughhh. You know how we feel about diets. Moreover, I gotta think researchers at Harvard could come up with a more creative name. I’ll try to stay open.

The diet prescribes healthy foods and helps eaters understand their “food instincts”- e.g., hunger, availability, familiarity- and learn to control them. At the end, MRIs shows that the reward center in the dieter’s brains lit up more intensely at photos of healthy food than at shots of the unhealthy crap that used to excite it.

It turns out, the trick is to reach for healthy foods when you’re hungry long enough to create a habitual response in the brain. Anecdotally, this has worked for me as I legitimately crave fruit and vegetables regular and rarely crave junk. When I want something sweet, I’m totally satisfied by an apple. Somehow, science is far more interesting to me know than when I was 17. Go figure.