Fruits And Vegetables

Here is an excerpt of an editorial from the San Francisco Examiner, which was published Thursday.CONSIDER THIS the Rubicon. We all know fruits and vegetables are life-savers, yet pizza and doughnuts still make up the main food groups in too many of our diets.For Baby Boomers especially, let the new results of a 14-year Harvard study be the turning point to a healthy diet. Otherwise, the risk of stroke and other diseases is all the greater.The study of 76,000 female registered nurses over a 14-year period and 39,000 male doctors and other medical workers over eight years found that the risk of stroke was cut by nearly a third among those who consumed a diet rich in fruits and vegetables.

WASHINGTON - Apples, peppers, celery and cherries top a list compiled by an environmental research organization of the 12 fruits and vegetables it says are the most contaminated by pesticides. The report from the Environmental Working Group ranks pesticide contamination for 46 fruits and vegetables, based on more than 100,000 lab tests conducted between 1992 and 2001 by the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. Additional testing was done on organic produce by the state of California.

If the foods you eat are mostly brown and white, chances are your diet is not only boring but also less than healthful. That's the premise of Dr. David Heber's new book, What Color Is Your Diet? (Regan, $25). Director of nutrition at the University of California, Los Angeles' Center for Human Nutrition, Heber says the key to a healthful diet is a rainbow of colors provided by fruits and vegetables. "I believe that most of our health problems are diet-related," Heber said in a telephone interview from his Los Angeles office.

I crave "fats and sweets." That is what the ice cream I wanted to snack on is called by the Food Guide Pyramid, a diagram the federal government has come up with to guide eaters to a more healthful diet. According to the pyramid, I should kill my craving by eating vegetables or fruits.The food pyramid pushes folks to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables each day. The idea is that if we fill up on such stuff instead of ice cream or chips, our innards will run smoother, our middles will be thinner and we will dance the limbo better.

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.

When I rank life's big worries, pesticide residue on the family's fruits and vegetables is way down my list.I say this after having read a barrage of information on pesticides in the diets of infants and children. I read the news accounts of what the National Academy of Sciences, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, and the Food and Drug Administration had to say recently about the subject. And I plowed through the subsequent flow of position papers issued by food industry and environmental action groups.

A couple of years ago, Diane W. Hale began growing herbs to make herown tea. This winter, she plans to begin marketing the seasonings tochefs at Baltimore's best restaurants.Hale is among a growing number of small farmers in the county finding a niche in the lucrative market for herbs, organic fruits and vegetables and specialty crops, county extension agent Thomas G. Ford said.Hale, who also grows organic fruits and vegetables and raises lambs on 15 acres, said she makes enough money to cover expenses and buygroceries for her family.

Release of the National Academy of Sciences report "Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children" has caused another food safety stir.Many parents are upset because the report concluded that there are serious deficiencies that need to be corrected in the way the federal government evaluates children's risks due to pesticide exposure.But the committee also concluded children should eat a wide variety of fruits and vegetables to get the vitamins and minerals they need, despite the need to improve the rules and regulations on pesticide use.This apparent conflict arises from the two main areas.

From California "juice bars" to the kitchens in your neighborhood, interest in fresh-squeezed juices is growing -- and not just in orange or grapefruit. These days, it could just as easily be carrot, wheatgrass, strawberry or peach."The cocktail for the '90s is juice," says Barbara Westfield, director of marketing and product development for Salton Housewares, which makes juicer equipment. Most of the more exotic juices can be made only with hefty juice extractors.Juice enthusiasts say raw fruits and vegetables are among the most healthful foods people can eat, and that juices provide a concentrated source of vitamins and minerals in an easy-to-eat, easy-to-digest form.