Saturated

Tucked away deep in Druid Hill Park beneath overgrown oak && trees and 15-foot-tall weeds, the outline of a swimming pool peeks out of the green brush.An old tennis court fence, long fallen and rusted red from decades of abandonment, has not fared much better amid the tall vegetation.Passers-by can no longer hear the thrashing of water and the laughter of children who once crowded the pool. Nor can they hear the rising voices of championship tennis players as they smacked the ball over the net.But local artist Joyce J. Scott, who is being paid $15,000 to help renovate the former "colored" section of the 745-acre park, says the memories are still here, just hidden behind almost half a century of neglect.

The owner of a string of McDonald's restaurants in Baltimore won an early round yesterday in his legal fight against the hamburger giant, setting the stage for a key showdown in federal court next week.Osborne A. Payne is suing McDonald's Corp., claiming the firm is driving down the worth of his stores by allowing a series of other golden arches to rise in the city, some of them just blocks away from Payne's.McDonald's fought back, asking Senior U.S. District Judge Alexander Harvey II yesterday to issue a temporary restraining order, forcing Payne to close the restaurants he runs in the city because he has fallen behind on his rent payments and service fees.

Mark "Moonie" Armacost vowed not to come to the Preakness this year unless he could act like a horse's rear end.Most infield partygoers pulled that off with the help of alcohol, loud music and skimpy outfits.Armacost took the challenge literally, renting a brown-and-white horse costume for $80 with his friend, Chuck Gavai."We thought it would be cool if somebody showed up at the Preakness with a horse suit on," said Gavai, 27, of Dunkirk, who made up the horse's better half.Gavai, a painter, got to be the horse's head because he went to Ellicott City and rented the suit.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Men who eat the equivalent of three cheeseburgers, fries and milkshakes each day triple their risk of prostate cancer, Stanford University researchers reported today.Asian men may increase their risk even more -- by four to eight times -- if they eat lots of food high in saturated fat, such as red meat, butter and cheese.But researchers also gave men some good news: Their study found vasectomy does not increase the risk of prostate cancer, as some previous research had found.

Nutrition news from here and there includes these snippets:* University of California at Berkeley Wellness Letter -- For low-fat guacamole, blend 1 medium avocado with 1 cup low-fat (1 percent) cottage cheese. Add 1 tablespoon lime juice, 1 teaspoon chopped chives and 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes. A quarter-cup serving has 60 calories and 4 grams of fat -- about half as much as regular guacamole.* Tufts University Diet & Nutrition Newsletter -- If you're buying your veggies precut and packaged in the new "breathable" bags, you might wonder if they're losing nutrients from all that handling.

Heart disease is still the No. 1 killer of Americans. It's No. 1 for all men, and No. 1 for all women.Lots of people have caught on to that and have quit smoking and improved eating and exercise habits, based on recommendations from our nation's experts.So it's disconcerting when something like the margarine/transfatty acid story roars into the headlines. It often makes us feel confused and helpless. And it creates a backlash against taking responsibility for our own health. That's why it's important to keep the relative risks in perspective.

For fans of movie-theater popcorn -- "the Godzilla of snack foods," according to a report released earlier this week -- there may be a kernel of hope. At least in Baltimore.Here, theater-goers have a good chance of sitting down with a tub of corn popped in vegetable oil, which in health terms, is better for you than that popped with the saturated-fat coconut oil cited in a study released Monday by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.The watchdog group reports that a 16-cup serving of unbuttered, coconut-oil-popped corn has 901 calories and 43 grams of cholesterol.

On several occasions we've looked at the little-book phenomenon, the rage among publishers for miniature works of minimal size and length, designed more to be small gifts than serious additions to anyone's library.Here we have something different: "Oil & Vinegar" and "Honey" are middle-size books -- "Honey" is 6 by 9 inches, while "Oil & Vinegar," although smaller in page size, has more than 250 of them. Both provide discussions of the indicated food stuffs, and they each contain a good deal of narrative with recipes added at the end.Of the two, "Oil & Vinegar" is the more substantial and practical.

I have to backtrack a little. Several weeks ago I suggested using olive oil as a spread for bread instead of butter (high in saturated fat) or margarine (high in trans-fatty acids), because it's a healthier kind of fat.I'll stand by that recommendation, but with some caveats.One is to limit the quantity you use, because eating too much fat of any kind increases the likelihood of unnecessary weight gain, as well as increasing your risks for some kinds of cancer.The second is to be very careful if you're inclined to prefer garlic in your oil. Several years ago the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Forget the steak of yesteryear, a 24-ounce slab of sizzling excess. The steak of the '90s is a different animal -- smaller, leaner and more artfully presented.It fits the more restrained role health experts advocate for beef -- and gets away from the huge, fat-loaded portions that Americans love and dietitians hate.Today's steak is an ensemble player in a medley of food that includes vegetables, grain and fruit.Today, most health organizations, from the American Heart Association to the American Dietetic Association, recommend a 3-ounce serving size for cooked beef.