"Eat your vegetables so you'll grow up to be big and strong."

I'll bet there aren't many of us who didn't hear that phrase or something very close to it come out of our mother's mouth when we were growing up. And, like she was about so many things, Mom was right about this.

Medical science has proved that the health benefits we enjoy when we make fresh vegetables an important part of our daily diet are numerous and multifaceted. A diet that includes regular consumption of produce is believed to help your body stave off a long list of serious physical ailments, including stroke, heart disease, diabetes and certain types of cancer.

But wait — there's more! Last week some new, fresh-off-the-truck nutritional research shows that regular vegetable consumption may also keep your mind sharp as you grow older.

A six-year study conducted by the Rush Institute for Healthy Aging in Chicago reported in last week's issue of the journal Neurology, suggested that people who eat at least two servings of vegetables a day have the mental acuity of a person five years younger than people of the same age who didn't eat their veggies.

Personally, I find this news to be rather depressing. Yes, you guessed it, I'm one of those non-vegetable-eating people who is putting his health at risk and, apparently, allowing my brain to waste away at a significantly accelerated rate.

The problem is that I like to eat food that tastes good. I like meat. I love sweets and salty snacks. I'll eat just about anything with cheese on it. Heck, I even enjoy the occasional apple, banana or grape.

But spinach? Broccoli? Brussel sprouts? Bleh! Why not just eat the grass clippings when I mow the lawn? It would taste just as good.

I realize, of course, that this is a bad attitude and is not good for my health. And I want to change, I really do. I'm not one of those people (and you know who you are) who can ignore compelling scientific data whenever I don't like the answers it gives me.

So, in the interest of keeping whatever mental ability I still have left intact for as long as possible, I am compelled to make an effort, at least, to try to include more vegetables in my diet. With that in mind, I went looking for suggestions on how a person might work a little more vegetation into his diet without too much leafy green pain and suffering.

For those of you who are in the same boat that I am, here are a few suggestions:

• Be generous with the mushrooms, peppers, and onions in your spaghetti sauce and on top of your pizzas. Try to go lighter on the meat.

• Add grated vegetables to batters and doughs when you're baking bread, muffins and cookies.

• Try some vegetable-based forms of pasta.

• Eat more soup! Most people can tolerate vegetables in soup form. Even me.

• Some people like adding grated carrots to their ground meat dishes (meatloaf, hamburgers, etc.) Try it, you might like it.

• Keep fresh crunchy vegetables like carrot sticks close at hand in the fridge to soothe the pangs of a late-night snack attack.

• Have a V8!

So, in closing, eat your vegetables like your mother told you to. Most of the time, she really does know best. And for goodness' sake, wash behind your ears

Bill Ferguson is a columnist for the Macon (Ga.) Telegraph.