Fruits And Vegetables

Kids are worried about finding their way around new schools, finding out what new teachers expect, wondering if they'll make new friends. But parents have a bigger worry, the old 8,000-pound gorilla that lumbers around every school year -- it's called lunch.Packing lunch for a child can try a parent's patience, fray the nerves, test the sanity and devastate the refrigerator. How, how to make it nutritious, delicious and, above all, something the child will eat?"Kids have to like the food," said dietitian Jodie Shield.

Paul Pedone was misidentified in an article in yesterday's A La Carte section. He is director of produce procurement for Super Fresh supermarkets.The Sun regrets the errors.The cell phone rings again, and the driver of the 3-week-old Ford 150 XLT picks it up."Produce, Bob," he says, and the master of produce logistics for Giant Food Inc. is on the job.Somebody needs corn, somebody is shipping tomatoes, somebody else has too many cantaloupes. Sorting it all out is a day's work for Bob Hartman, who runs the grocer's local produce buying program -- and who, as "Bobby," stars in its TV commercials.

For 16 years, season after season, customers return to LaMartina's produce stand in Linthicum to buy Maryland-grown tomatoes and potatoes, string beans, watermelons and cantaloupes because, they say, if it isn't fresh, the LaMartinas won't sell it."He only has the best produce, really, and it seems like he brings it in every day fresh from somewhere," said Jo Gurney as her husband, John, bagged a few potatoes. "This is a wonderful place."Linda Johnson has been a customer at the stand on 3 acres at Schulamar Road and Baltimore-Annapolis Boulevard since it opened.

Vitamin C was back in the news recently. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that we all need more vitamin C than recommended in the past, and has suggested that the National Academy of Sciences increase the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) in its regularly scheduled, coming revision.But before you rush to the supplement store, get a handle on what that means.The current RDA is 60 milligrams a day for most people, and 100 mg/day for smokers. NIH concluded, based on a detailed study of seven men living in well-controlled hospital conditions for several months, that the RDA should be increased to 200 mg/day.

Nutrition news '95 brought solid, usable information. The good news gleaned from this year's research sets the stage for some doable resolutions for next year. Here's what we learned.* Pregnancy and childbirth: Vitamin news for pregnant women tied good nutrition to birth-defects prevention. A March of Dimes study showed only 15 percent of childbearing-age women realize their need for folic acid, a B-vitamin shown to reduce neural-tube birth defects. Spina bifida and anencephaly occur within the first 28 days, before a woman knows she's pregnant, so good nutrition is essential before pregnancy begins.

Which sounds easier to live with: eating strawberries and carrots, or having a stroke?Last month, data from the Framingham Study, started in 1948, showed that the men who ate the smallest amount of fruits and vegetables were the most likely to have a stroke. The more fruits and vegetables eaten, the lower the risk. The women's version of the study appears likely to show the same results.Wherever you are right now on the fruit and vegetable hot line, you can decrease your chance of having a stroke by 22 percent just by eating three more servings per day of fruits or vegetables.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Last week's "48 Hours" did an "expose" on pesticides and the safety of the American food supply. They actually had a mother in tears because she fed her child grapes, which the host led her to believe were highly contaminated and dangerous. Give me a break.While pretending to be balanced, actual air time and editing created an alarming, though distorted, picture of killer fruits and vegetables raining destruction on our kids. And it attempted to create controversy where there is none (in the name of ratings?

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.

This is the time of year when perfectly sane people take to the trees. That is, they climb out on limbs to predict what the new year will bring.Some limbs, of course, are sturdier than others. It's not hard to predict that American cuisine is going to continue to diversify, as new ethnic specialties enter the mainstream and as currently popular ethnic foods multiply by dividing into regions.Nor is it hard to predict that health and safety are going to continue to affect food choices, as the government gears up to increase monitoring of the food supply and to persuade people to eat more healthful foods.

Too much fat. Too much sodium. Too few fruits and vegetables. Not enough of certain vitamins.Sounds like a meal at the local pit beef stand, doesn't it? Unfortunately, the above description is taken from a U.S. Department of Agriculture report on school lunches nationwide.The study released last month found levels of fat and sodium in school cafeteria fare that far exceed the government's dietary guidelines. In another recent study of children's eating habits, the consumer advocacy group Public Voice for Food and Health Policy said 57 percent of youngsters ages 6 to 11 eat less than one serving of fruit daily, and 32 percent eat less than a serving of vegetables a day.The federal government has too long ignored or pooh-poohed these bad habits.