The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime.

When I moved down to San Diego, I quickly learned that it's hard out there for a vegetarian. The realization happened during my first or second week in paradise when my request for "the vegetarian option" was answered with "chicken pasta." So you can imagine my level of elation when I moved to San Francisco -- a city where I can eat as a happy and picky vegetarian. It should come as no surprise then, that within several weeks of living here, I discovered my infatuation with beet root.

For most of my life, I have avoided beet roots. Some combination of their color and texture and my inability to comprehend their role in the gustatory landscape just turned me off. A few weeks ago, I went to dinner with friends. A puffed quinoa option immediately caught our eye. While the quinoa was fine and puffy, it was a roasted golden beet accoutrement that made this choice a delightful one. It was love at first bite. 

Recently, I noticed that my company salad bar offers beet root. The first time this came to my attention, I loaded up. In fact, I probably had more beet root than spinach leaves. Salad in hand, I ran off to a team meeting. Somewhere in between chomping on a squishy, deep red piece of beet root and taking notes about a PowerPoint slide, I had a frightening thought: Oh my god. Is this beet root turning my mouth red? My lips? My teeth? My tongue? As I investigated the pink permeation throughout the rest of my salad and looked around a room of colleagues and senior leaders, I started to perspire with angst. I contemplated my options: Excuse myself to the restroom, aggressively run my tongue across my teeth, or, of course! I had my phone! 

I subtly opened the camera application and switched to the front lens. At an opportune moment, I discretely smiled and checked my teeth. They were Crest white. I was shocked, especially given that our digestive systems can't even break down the dye (but we don't need to get into that). How is it possible that beet root dye doesn't color your teeth? 

Before lunch today, my team had a planning meeting. The product I work on is a matching platform (think Match.com) that matches small businesses with lenders that will lend to them. When a small business goes through our product, it doesn't look like much is happening; they answer a few questions and then we tell them which lender is likely to approve them for a loan. But behind the scenes, our robots are break dancing. They're crunching data and running algorithms and doing all kinds of tech-y smarty pants stuff to make the match. There's more than what meets the eye (and our product will only get better and better at this as time goes on). 

Today as I was adding beets to my salad, the pesky question reentered my brain. Beets are such underachievers! Why don't they just go all the way? What are they actually doing anyway?

After lunch, I went back to my desk and decided that enough is enough. I obviously needed to end this with some Googling. Well, it turns out that no amount of Googling could quite answer my question. What I did learn, however, is that beets are actually ridiculously good for you. They're doing all kinds of things behind the scene like pumping your body with antioxidants, iron, and other wonderful nutrients that make your skin and hair radiant. 

The more I think about it, beets are actually wonderfully inspirational. While they are really quite ugly and don't taste like anything, they don't try to show off. They don't embarrass you with scarlet-stamped teeth just because that'll get them noticed. Instead, they're creating real value, even if it's not recognizable to the naked eye, even if it's not immediate. As we go forward making the small and big decisions in our lives, it's important to think past the pink teeth to what lies behind them. It doesn't matter what it looks like in any given moment. Instead, think about the longstanding effects. Do what makes you everlastingly radiant. Otherwise, you'll forever be that pink dye on the cutting board that comes right off with a wash.