Fruits And Vegetables

WESTMINSTER -- One day at Manchester Elementary School, cafeteria manager Rose Frebertshauser mysteriously handed out a sticker to every third child in line and told them she'd explain later.After the 300 children had eaten their "deluxe burger," she took aside the 100 students with stickers for a small survey. Their stipend for participating would be a cookie.It turned out the burger was made of ground turkey instead of higher-fat beef. But the children liked it, she said."I told them they could have a cookie whether they marked the 'yes' or the 'no' column," Frebertshauser said.

Cereal makers have long designed eye-catching boxes to lure children to supermarket breakfast aisles. Now, grocers and produce companies are turning to Big Bird and other "Sesame Street" characters in an effort to make fruits and vegetables just as appealing. An emerging national movement that uses the Muppets to market vegetables to preschoolers got a foothold in Baltimore last week when it was adopted by two area businesses — Mars Super Markets and Savage-based East Coast Fresh, a Mars vendor and processor of fresh-cut fruits and vegetables.

Yippee! It's summer time! That means juicy peaches, plump strawberries, fragrant tomatoes, sweeter corn -- and farmers' markets.There are close to two dozen local farmers' market across the state (see box, 2F). In the city, the Baltimore Farmers' Market at Holliday and Saratoga streets will be celebrating its 15th anniversary July 19. While the market opens at 8 a.m., festivities begin at 9 a.m. with Mayor Kurt Schmoke expected to appear at 9:30 a.m., followed by a birthday cake, strolling entertainment and costumed characters.

Nutritionists from the University of Maryland Medical Center regularly contribute a guest post. The latest post is from Catherine Schroeder, dietetic intern. Spring showers inspire the growth of a colorful array of fruits and vegetables to decorate your dishes, tempt your taste buds and nourish yourself naturally. Vibrantly colored produce adds visual appeal to any dish without the use of synthetic dyes or additives. More importantly, these brightly colored foods pack a powerful nutrition punch.

Throughout my childhood summers, a crop of cucumbers dangled from my grandmother's fence. Even when I was a toddler, a pick-your-own trip to her back yard was the highlight of any visit. I could wash and eat that cuke, skin and all, while it was still sun-warm and juicy.I've been a cucumber addict ever since.For me, cucumbers make a salad. Their sweet, delicate flavor eased my transition from iceberg to the stronger-flavored salad greens.And when my parents' garden produced fresh cucumbers, our family indulged in a delicious, fat-free, simple-to-make cucumber and onion salad:Peel and thinly-slice any available cucumbers.

In explaining the unhealthy eating habits that have fostered widespread obesity and other health problems in the inner city, Baltimore faces a chicken-and-egg (or, perhaps more accurately, Chicken McNugget-and-Egg McMuffin) issue: Do people not choose healthy foods because they are unavailable, or are healthy foods unavailable because people choose unhealthy ones? It's probably some of both. Supermarkets followed affluent residents to the suburbs, and the corner markets and convenience stores that remain rarely stock fresh fruits and vegetables.

Cereal makers have long designed eye-catching boxes to lure children to supermarket breakfast aisles. Now, grocers and produce companies are turning to Big Bird and other "Sesame Street" characters in an effort to make fruits and vegetables just as appealing. An emerging national movement that uses the Muppets to market vegetables to preschoolers got a foothold in Baltimore last week when it was adopted by two area businesses — Mars Super Markets and Savage-based East Coast Fresh, a Mars vendor and processor of fresh-cut fruits and vegetables.

When Eva Monheim makes table decorations for a party, she likes to use material straight from the garden: Swiss chard, green and red peppers, corn and great bunches of cherry tomatoes."

WASHINGTON -- Seeking to breathe new life into an initiative that has languished for five months, President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore called on Congress yesterday to give the Food and Drug Administration authority to prevent foreign fruits and vegetables produced in unsanitary conditions from entering the country."

On a steamy morning in Annapolis, the food arrives in a tractor-trailer straight from the Maryland Wholesale Produce Market in Jessup - loaded with thousands of pounds of donated tomatoes, peaches, bananas, potatoes and corn. With the precision of a drill team, Food Link volunteers unload the food, divvy it up and cart it off to feed the hungry. "This is a good shipment today; there's an assortment of everything," says Charles Brown. "Last week they gave us plantains, and people don't particularly like them."

In explaining the unhealthy eating habits that have fostered widespread obesity and other health problems in the inner city, Baltimore faces a chicken-and-egg (or, perhaps more accurately, Chicken McNugget-and-Egg McMuffin) issue: Do people not choose healthy foods because they are unavailable, or are healthy foods unavailable because people choose unhealthy ones? It's probably some of both. Supermarkets followed affluent residents to the suburbs, and the corner markets and convenience stores that remain rarely stock fresh fruits and vegetables.

I applaud Laura Vozzella's profile of entrepreneurs in our farmers markets ("First harvest," April 28). However, her focus on goats and pedal-powered smoothies missed the big picture: farmers markets provide Baltimoreans with fruits and vegetables that are missing in our communities. Most neighborhoods don't offer fresh food. In Southwest Baltimore, 75 percent of food stores don't sell any produce. Only two of 13 neighborhoods analyzed in the Baltimore DrillDown have the recommended grocery shelf-space per resident.

Poverty in Baltimore, a serious problem in the best of times, has worsened with the current recession. A recent New York Times article on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program - what used to be called Food Stamps - states that 1 in 8 Americans and 1 in 4 children now participate. Here in Baltimore, as of Oct. 31, the public school system had 83.6 percent participation in the free and reduced price meals (FARM) program, an increase of 10 percentage points or 9,000 more students compared with the same date in 2008.

Progressive, health-conscious people up in Michigan launched an effort to bring fresh fruits and vegetables to Detroit's "food deserts" - large sections of town with plenty of liquor stores and fast-food places but few or no supermarkets or farmers' markets. A small fleet of vendor-style trucks now bring produce to people who have neither well-stocked food stores in their neighborhoods nor cars for schlepping groceries from distant markets. A $75,000 loan from the Michigan Economic Development Corp.

Eat your fruits and vegetables. It's not hard, and they'll help you stay fit. That's the message from state officials, who have launched a month-long educational campaign to support March's National Nutrition Month. Buying local produce will also provide the freshest and most affordable foods, say the officials from the departments of Agriculture and Health and Mental Hygiene. The officials say 80 percent of heart disease, stroke and diabetes can be prevented by eating well, along with exercising and not smoking.

produceguru.com Getting ready to eat better in the new year? This Web site offers a produce database with a wealth of information on many fruits and vegetables. It also has nutrition information and produce news.

Twenty years ago, Les and Pam Pahl set up a small vegetable stand on a corner of York Road with 14 other farmers. A handful of customers stopped by for asparagus on their way home. Today, what became the Towson Farmers' Market attracts more than 2,000 people to a long stretch of Allegheny Avenue between restaurants and antiques shops. Customers at the eagerly anticipated event aren't looking for just asparagus anymore. They're also buying hand-picked strawberries, potatoes, zucchini and flowers.

Most people throw out their rotting fruits and vegetables.Alley Watada studies them for a living.Watada, a plant physiologist at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, has spent four years studying how produce breathes -- and rots. The point is to find the right temperatures and packing materials for preserving everything from asparagus to zucchini after it is picked, shipped and cut for consumption."They take in oxygen the way that people do, so how much oxygen they get is critical," said Watada, 66, of College Park.

When a recipe calls for a specific number of pounds of a vegetable, such as cucumber, how do you know how many to use if you don't have a kitchen scale to weigh them? Look around in your cookbooks and you can often find equivalents. Many recipes include directions such as "1 pound tomatoes (X number of medium)." Or go to freshpreserving.com, the site for Ball canning supplies. Look under "preserving guide" and you can download a very handy produce purchase guide that includes equivalents for most common fruits and vegetables.

The harvest was spread across folding tables - piles of potatoes, buckets of tender peaches, swollen watermelons, heaps of glossy lettuce and sweet corn. But at the Woodlawn Farmers' Market, Karen Smith was most pleased to find the carrots that her 5-year-old son "will actually eat." Until the market opened this month across from Social Security Administration headquarters, the boy had only tasted the prewashed, precut carrots from plastic packages. The leafy green tops were a novelty.