ATLANTA (Cox News Service) - These are the salad days for the vegetable everybody loves to hate.

Mention broccoli, and many adults readily show their inner child: Noses scrunch, grimaces appear. Ewww!

In the school cafeteria, even disguised with cheese sauce, it lingers on the steam table while all the popular vegetables get picked. It earned a presidential veto from George Bush, and George W. Bush shuns the stalks while eating the crowns.

Yet somewhere between the convenience packs of florets in supermarkets and the news that broccoli contains plenty of phytochemicals that may help prevent cancer, the vegetable started getting second looks.

Consumption of fresh broccoli rose 300 percent in the past two decades, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, making it one of the fastest-growing vegetable crops. We used 5.6 pounds of broccoli per person in 2000, up from 1.4 pounds in 1980.

That's a lot of stir-fries and broccoli salads, but to keep things in perspective, know that 52 percent of vegetable servings in 1999 came from five foods: iceberg lettuce, frozen potatoes, fresh potatoes, potato chips and canned tomatoes. (Don't get your hopes up: Nobody really considers potato chips a vegetable, but they do count for statistical purposes as part of the potato crop.) Head lettuce, such as iceberg, totaled nearly 25 pounds of use per person in 2000.

Still, we are using more vegetables overall - 192 pounds per person in 1999, up from 149 in 1980, according to the Census Bureau's recently released Statistical Abstract of the United States.

While some of us were busy picking out bits of broccoli from our ginger chicken, others were rushing to incorporate the vegetable wherever we could. Scattered on pizza, sprouted on sandwiches, shouldering aside cabbage in slaw, broccoli blossomed. It started showing up at all the in places, including the snack table at Atlanta Lawn Tennis Association matches.

Becky Repic usually brings to her ALTA matches a salad: crab, taco or broccoli. She always gets requests for the broccoli recipe, which includes all sorts of sweet or fatty extras to make it more palatable: bacon bits, mayonnaise, sugar, raisins and shredded cheese.

"People think they're eating healthier when they're eating broccoli salad," says Repic, who's not convinced of that herself.

At home, she likes to steam broccoli with butter and garlic. She won't eat it raw.

She's still working on converting her 14-year-old son. "If I put something on it, like a cheese sauce, he can tolerate it a little more than plain," Repic says. "I think some people don't like the texture of it. It's kind of flowery."

The cheese trick doesn't work well at metro Atlanta's Mount Bethel Elementary, where students shun broccoli for salad on the one day a week it's served. Teachers eat it, though, says cafeteria manager Lisa Hong.

It's a similar story at Stephenson Middle School in Lithonia, Ga. Broccoli stands in the middle of the pack, not as popular as corn but not as dreaded as greens.

"They eat it OK, but they don't love to get it," says nutrition manager Desiree Ekanemesang. "Kids have this problem with broccoli. Even in my own home, some of my kids won't eat it."

Adults will, though. Health concerns have boosted broccoli and vegetables such as spinach and bell peppers, especially among baby boomers. Broccoli stands out as one of the best vegetables: It's a nutritional powerhouse rich in potassium, vitamin A and vitamin C as well as antioxidants that may help ward off cancer, says Kathleen Zelman, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association and nutrition consultant.

Convenience products such as cut florets and broccoli slaw have made it easier to choose broccoli. The same strategy has elevated carrots from 6.2 pounds used per person in 1980 to 11.3 pounds in 2000, thanks to snack packs of sticks and bags of baby carrots. Other flavorful produce crops seeing their popularity soar include chili peppers, asparagus, tomatoes and cantaloupe.

"The range of products that we eat in vegetables has increased markedly in the last decade," says Gary Lucier, an agricultural economist with the USDA's Economic Research Service.

Lucier, by the way, plays on the broccoli team. A Chinese restaurant near his office in Washington serves his favorite version.

"General Tso's chicken," he says. "You've got to have the broccoli. It really makes it."

Copyright 2002 Cox News Service. All rights reserved.