The past three days, I've eaten an apple a day. That's a small miracle and a new experience for me.

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The past three days, I've eaten an apple a day. That's a small miracle for me. When I was a kid, I didn't eat much fresh fruit. When I did, it burned my mouth and caused swelling. Not eating healthy fresh fruit would drive my mother crazy. I was good with vegetables though, so I didn't get too much flack. Still, if I wanted something sweet, fruit wouldn't do it. No apples or pears, cherries, or watermelon for me. By the time I hit my twenties I had figured out that I was allergic to a lot of different fruits. Actually, this only applied to fresh fruits. Cook them and I could enjoy them. But outside of applesauce and pies, and the rare compote, who cooks fruit? I could also eat canned fruit. At one point, when I was working at a hospital, I went to see about getting my hay fever dealt with. I mentioned to the allergist that I was allergic to cherries. She was doubtful, so she told me to bring some cherries to my next appointment. The next visit, I presented the fresh cherries. She sliced one, took a photo of the tissue on the inside of my lip. Then she placed the cherry there for a few minutes and, sure enough, the tissue began to swell up. That was the allergic reaction. She took another picture and told me she was going to submit it to a journal. It didn't help me, but maybe other patients wouldn't be treated with such doubt after that. Meanwhile, about 33 years have passed since that time and fortunately, my allergies to fresh fruit have disappeared, just as my hay fever has drastically diminished. Poison Ivy is worse than ever though. Now, I started writing this because I've begun eating apples. You may take this totally for granted. But the past three days, I've had an apple a day. That's a big deal for me. When I was a kid, eating fresh fruit would burn my mouth and cause inflammation. Not knowing which fruits put me at risk, I avoided almost all of them, except bananas. To satisfy my craving for sweets, I'd eat a lot of ice cream and cake. If there was a cake in the house, my younger brother would get one or two slices and I'd finish the rest-- especially chocolate cake with icing. And that ice cream-- I could go through a half gallon in a day or two. I have to wonder what my life would have been like if I didn't have fruit allergies. It ends up I was probably never allergic to peaches, strawberries and grapes. I'm not sure about a lot of fruits because by the time I was a teen, I literally avoided all fresh fruit except bananas. If there was a serving tray, at a party, of fresh fruit, it would look like a cross between a tray of fire and thorns to me. Once I had children and I was buying fruit for them, I started, very cautiously, trying fresh fruit again. Grapes, strawberries and blueberries were okay. I realized I really loved cherries. I always liked the canned cherries, so I tried the fresh ones. Sure enough, I still had the allergic reaction when I was in my thirties. Finally, the past few years-- maybe three or four, the reaction has almost totally disappeared. So this year, I've finally overcome my fresh fruit aversion enough to try taking bites out of apples. This is certainly a normal experience for most people. But for me, it's new. I realized just how new when I enjoyed the first bite-- the texture, the sound. This was new stuff. The freshness of the taste is something that still hits me as a new treat, with my three days of apple eating experience. Now, I worked my way up to this, in the past two years, eating pears, peaches and plums. But crossing the apple threshold has been a big one for me. Since I've been an adult, finding new things, new experiences has always been a treat. I feel I'm lucky that I am one of those rare Ameicans who at the age of 57 is finally discovering the pleasure of that first crisp bite. It's finally hitting me that I can have an apple instead of a fruit pastry, which I've long been hooked on, like Tastycake Jelly Krimpets. I don't know if it's too late in my life to change my addiction to sweets-- to switch to fruits. But I'm workig on it. It makes me wonder what other simple, easily unnoticed things from my childhood I've held onto that I can now let go of. Imagine avoiding eating apples and cherries and pears for over 50 years. This newfound "fruit eating ability" may even help me lose some of the pounds I'd like to lose. I started writing this because sometimes, writing about these kinds of things helps to flesh out deeper understandings. Sometimes, changes in our lives, in our ways of seeing, doing, feeling lead to new insights and understandings. I'm not sure where my new habit of eating an apple a day will take me. I don't know if I'll change my relationship to sweets or lose weight. I do see this new "ability" as a change in my overactive immune system. My body is getting along better with the rest of the universe. Maybe this trend will lead to me becoming more tolerant in other ways. Maybe, as my "irritability" response that has subsided in my mouth will lead to my having more patience. Or maybe, my alertness and sharpness will dull. Aging is a wondrous thing. I embrace it with enthusiasm and curiosity. I just did a search on fruit allergy. Apparently, I am not alone. There's a tie-in to hay-fever, and the worst allergens are in the skin of the fruit. It appears there are more people than I thought who go through this, hopefully, including the later in life discovery of the pleasure of biting into a crisp, fresh apple-- hopefully, before they lose their teeth, not a problem in civilized countries where universal health care includes dental care.(What, you though I could do a non-political article?)

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

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Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

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