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Heirloom beets served at Bibiana Restaurant in downtown Washington, D.C.

Joseph Silverman/The Washington Times /Landov

Heirloom beets served at Bibiana Restaurant in downtown Washington, D.C.

Children hate beets. Many adults hate beets. In fact, so few people in the U.S. eat table beets that the federal government doesn't bother to keep track of how many are grown and sold, even though it does keep track of just about every other crop, including turnip greens and horseradish.

But it turns out that this was a good year for beets (otherwise known as beet roots or garden beets, but not to be confused with sugar beets.)

Some farmers markets say beet sales have surged since January, and they've doubled over the past few years. And it seems like every restaurant across the country serves beets these days — especially the ubiquitous beet salad.

Does all this constitute a beet renaissance? Irwin Goldman says, absolutely, yes. He breeds beets at the University of Wisconsin, where he's a professor of horticulture. He has been waiting for this renaissance for years.

"I think it's just wonderful to see because it's just an incredibly fabulous vegetable that I think is totally underappreciated," he says.

Eliza Barclay/NPR

Anna Hu at the Ao Hua Farmers Market in Shanghai. After years of working long hours and eating only in restaurants, Hu has learned how to cook vegetables and eat more healthfully.

As people's incomes rise in a developing nation, so does the amount of food they eat. That's what has been happening in China for the past 30 years. But many people, especially in the middle class, are discovering that you don't have to eat and eat just because there's plenty of food available.

Still, fast food has become a habit for a lot of people. KFC first opened its doors in Beijing back in 1987 and now operates more than 3,000 stores in China. McDonald's has about half that many, and there are dozens of Chinese chains, too. It's no surprise, then, that Chinese people are getting fat.

But fast food is only part of the problem. People are also just eating more.

"More, more, more of everything — larger portions, with more ingredients, more salt, more sugar, more oil, more fats," says Paul French, a market analyst in Shanghai who has written a book called Fat China. "Breakfast and lunch and dinner and supper and grazing with snacks during the day. And drinking fizzy drinks rather than tea."

Many cultures greet the New Year with a feast that symbolically sets the table for the year ahead. As they sit down to traditional dishes, people often try to metaphorically eat their hopes and goals for the coming year.

We here at The Salt did a quick survey of New Year food traditions around the world, and couldn't help but notice a few common themes. The ingredients in these dishes might reflect cultural variety, but the sentiments behind them are pretty universal. What most people hope for as they sit down for a New Year's meal, it seems, is happiness, health and wealth. Sometimes that latter wish is expressed quite concretely — in the form of actual money in the food.

Denmark

Jeremy Noble via Flickr

In Denmark they eat a towering cake called kransekage for New Year's Eve. Norwegians, who also eat it, call it kransekake.

Main dishes on New Year's Eve include boiled cod, stewed kale and cured saddle of pork. But clearly, Denmark's forte has always been its pastries, right? The Danes — not the Dutch, don't get it twisted — craft a towering cake called kransekage for New Year's Eve. The traditional dessert comprises layer upon layer (up to 18!) of marzipan rings and can be topped with icing, chocolate and almonds. The shape of the cake is reminiscent of a cornucopia, or horn of plenty, and promises a future of happiness and financial success. The cake is adorned with toothpick flags and served with champagne at midnight.

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The concept for Meatballs harkens back to Michel Richard's childhood in postwar France. "My mother used to make pork meatballs with potato and garlic. She was trying to raise five kids by herself. She was trying to keep food costs down," he says.

Melissa Forsyth/NPR

The concept for Meatballs harkens back to Michel Richard's childhood in postwar France. "My mother used to make pork meatballs with potato and garlic. She was trying to raise five kids by herself. She was trying to keep food costs down," he says.

When I'm considering a gourmet lunch, meatballs don't exactly spring to mind. So I was more than a little surprised to hear that haute cuisine chef Michel Richard was opening a meatball joint just down the street from NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C.

It turns out that gourmet meatballs are one example of "dressed up comfort food" that seems to fill a certain longing in hard times. Customers like them because they're filling, homey, portable and cheap. Chefs like them because they're cheap.

That's no small thing for restaurateurs these days, who have to juggle rising food prices against customer's pinched wallets. Why would you sell meatballs, we asked Richard? "You can keep the price down," he says flatly.

Enlarge Chuck Crow/The Plain Dealer /Landov

Rachel Zayas, a registered nurse, sets up the shift board for the night shift at the Cleveland Clinic.

Chuck Crow/The Plain Dealer /Landov

Rachel Zayas, a registered nurse, sets up the shift board for the night shift at the Cleveland Clinic.

Working the night shift is bad for your health. But what if that's because the food is so lousy?

That's the provocative question raised this week by the editors of PLoS Medicine, an online medical journal.

Scientists have been making the case that shift work increases a person's risk of obesity, cancer, and sleep disorders. And then earlier this month, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health reported that nurses who worked the night shift were more likely to have Type 2 diabetes. Being overweight accounted for part of that, but normal-weight nurses also faced a greater risk of diabetes if they worked nights.

"Although some of the effects of shift work are probably unavoidable," the journal editors wrote in this week's editorial, "others, such as eating patterns, are obvious targets for intervention." Translation: You can't change the fact that night work messes with your body, but you can change what you put in your mouth.

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People who ate a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin D, which are commonly found in fish, and in vitamins C, E and B, which are often found in vegetables, were less likely to have their brains shrink, and were more likely to score higher on the memory and thinking tests, a study found.

iStockphoto.com

People who ate a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin D, which are commonly found in fish, and in vitamins C, E and B, which are often found in vegetables, were less likely to have their brains shrink, and were more likely to score higher on the memory and thinking tests, a study found.

There has long been a hope that people in search of a fountain of youth for the brain could look no further than their dinner plate.

Just last month, researchers reported that people who eat baked or broiled fish at least once a week may be protecting their brains from Alzheimer's and other brain problems.

But it's been surprisingly difficult to figure out for sure whether the food people eat really can protect their brains. For one thing, it's incredibly hard to identify exactly how individual foods, or their components, may influence the brain.

Perhaps more importantly, how can you know for sure it's really what people eat as opposed to other things that tend to go along with a healthful diet, like exercise?

A new study, however, makes a stab at teasing this apart.

Enlarge Maggie Starbard/NPR

Georgia O'Neal harvests winter greens at the Tree and Leaf Farm in Unionville, Va., on March 16, 2011.

Maggie Starbard/NPR

Georgia O'Neal harvests winter greens at the Tree and Leaf Farm in Unionville, Va., on March 16, 2011.

If you're a fresh vegetable lover, it's hard to get excited about what's available in the supermarket produce section in the dead of winter. Whatever is there often has made a long journey from a field in a distant, sunny locale and been sprayed with something to keep it looking fresh. It's usually a little worse for the wear.

But winter veggies from your local farmer may be right under your nose for the picking, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Earlier this month, the agency announced that winter farmers markets are taking off.

Since 2010, these markets have increased 38 percent across the country to more than 1,200 sites. You can scout out the closest one through the National Farmers Market Directory.

New York, California and Pennsylvania lead the way with the most winter markets so far. Our colleagues over at KUNC in Colorado are also reporting a big expansion of markets in their state.