Corn Oil

FAST FOOD It's fast, cheap and filling, and it doesn't matter whether it's fancy or healthy. Those are the prevailing sentiments about fast food, according to a nationwide Washington Post survey. Forty-eight percent of the 1,002 adults polled said they ate fast food once a week, and 4 percent said they ate it once a day. Interestingly, 51 percent of Republicans ate at fast-food restaurants at least once a week, compared with 43 percent of Democrats, the survey shows. SPREAD THE NEWS Cholesterol-conscious cooks, take note: Mazola corn oil is dropping advertising claims that imply that the product reduces cholesterol.

Will olive oil become the oat bran of the '90s? Once considered a heavy, high-cal artery-clogger, olive oil is the new darling of health watchers, thanks to recent medical reports that Italians who prefer olive oil over butter and margarine seem to have lower cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar levels and therefore reduced risk of heart attack. A recent Journal of the American Medical Association reports on 4,903 healthy men and women ages 20 to 59, who were questioned about their eating habits and tested for blood-fat levels at nine medical centers in Italy.

A TIP OF THE TOPPER TO THE GIMME CAP The well-made hat is now the property of the dapper few. And if more try to follow their example, how many department stores will be able to fit them properly when it is hard enough to find a clerk to ring up a few pairs of socks? To this dilemma, the headwear industry of the 1980s has found it own answer. It is called the baseball cap, football coach's cap, feed cap or (most revealingly) gimme cap. The old-regime hat was costly, bulky, permanent; the gimme cap is cheap, portable and relatively disposable.

Simple but elegant, that's the recipe: 1 part vinegar, 3 or 4 parts oil, salt, pepper, a dash of mustard perhaps, and you and your salad are in business. Add some garlic, a minced shallot or two, a handful of fragrant herbs, and just about any basic food - vegetable or meat - will be deliciously dressed. A garlicky vinaigrette with a dash of walnut oil transforms leftover steamed broccoli into a first-class salad. Vinaigrette seasoned with chopped capers, horseradish and dill makes cold baked potatoes into the perfect complement for hot barbecued sausages.

Though it is doubtful that A Tuscan in the Kitchen (Clarkson N. Potter, $24.95) will revolutionize cookbook publishing, its recipe format is a radical departure: There are few quantities given for ingredients, nor are there cooking times. "If you make a mistake in tablespoons, it's not going to hurt you," writes author Pino Luongo, creator of Il Cantinori restaurant in New York's Greenwich Village and Sapore di Mare on Long Island. In Luongo's cookbook, amounts and cooking times are regarded as points of common sense in the kitchen.

Spring approaches hesitantly, breaking the grip of winter bit by bit. In small changes, it makes itself known. And then one day you smell it. It doesn't matter that the calendar says it's weeks away. Your nose knows. The world's about to sprout again. Whenever seasons butt against one another, there is havoc in the kitchen. One day a stew is steaming on the back of the stove; the next, it's time to prepare the charcoal grill for another season. Yet there is a way to deal with the fickleness of seasons without extra work or excessive waste.

(Editor's note: Jane Fonda, like millions of other American women, once put herself through a debilitating cycle of crash diets, pills and binges in the effort to achieve an "ideal" figure. She learned the hard way that the real goal is in achieving your best and healthiest self - losing fat but retaining muscle, raising your metabolism and lowering your natural set-point weight. Now, in "Jane Fonda's New Workout and Weight Loss Program," she makes her hard-won knowledge available to everyone.

Around this time each year for about a decade, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has rounded up Canada geese from parks and airports across New Jersey, herded them into pens, and euthanized them with carbon dioxide. The process has begun again, and it is set to continue through July as the government fights an overabundance of geese up and down the East Coast, responding to complaints about waste, property damage, and aviation safety. But the program is not without detractors in the animal-rights community.

Just like people, overweight pets may not be as healthy or as long-lived as they could be. So to help slim obese dogs and cats, here's a recipe for a low- calorie treat from Frances Sheridan Goulart's book Bone Appetit: MUTTRECAL COOKIES. Combine 1 cup sprouted soybeans, a few drops soy sauce, 1 tablespoon vegetable oil and a dash of sea salt. Spread the mixture in a single layer on a greased baking sheet. Bake, stirring occasionally, for 25 minutes at 325 degrees. Serve warm and crunchy.

You'd think it would be easy to buy a jar of mayonnaise. Not necessarily. One label states that the product is "light" and "cholesterol free. " Another claims to be "light" and "reduced calorie. " Still another label states that the mayonnaise is "half the calories" and "low sodium. " The confusion doesn't end with the mayonnaise. Up and down supermarket aisles, a barrage of dietary claims awaits the shopper - to the point that a college degree in nutrition seems necessary to make sense of it. "The supermarket aisles really become a mine field of misleading information for the consumer," says Bruce Silverglade, legal director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Around this time each year for about a decade, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has rounded up Canada geese from parks and airports across New Jersey, herded them into pens, and euthanized them with carbon dioxide. The process has begun again, and it is set to continue through July as the government fights an overabundance of geese up and down the East Coast, responding to complaints about waste, property damage, and aviation safety. But the program is not without detractors in the animal-rights community.

Simple but elegant, that's the recipe: 1 part vinegar, 3 or 4 parts oil, salt, pepper, a dash of mustard perhaps, and you and your salad are in business. Add some garlic, a minced shallot or two, a handful of fragrant herbs, and just about any basic food - vegetable or meat - will be deliciously dressed. A garlicky vinaigrette with a dash of walnut oil transforms leftover steamed broccoli into a first-class salad. Vinaigrette seasoned with chopped capers, horseradish and dill makes cold baked potatoes into the perfect complement for hot barbecued sausages.

FAST FOOD It's fast, cheap and filling, and it doesn't matter whether it's fancy or healthy. Those are the prevailing sentiments about fast food, according to a nationwide Washington Post survey. Forty-eight percent of the 1,002 adults polled said they ate fast food once a week, and 4 percent said they ate it once a day. Interestingly, 51 percent of Republicans ate at fast-food restaurants at least once a week, compared with 43 percent of Democrats, the survey shows. SPREAD THE NEWS Cholesterol-conscious cooks, take note: Mazola corn oil is dropping advertising claims that imply that the product reduces cholesterol.

Will olive oil become the oat bran of the '90s? Once considered a heavy, high-cal artery-clogger, olive oil is the new darling of health watchers, thanks to recent medical reports that Italians who prefer olive oil over butter and margarine seem to have lower cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar levels and therefore reduced risk of heart attack. A recent Journal of the American Medical Association reports on 4,903 healthy men and women ages 20 to 59, who were questioned about their eating habits and tested for blood-fat levels at nine medical centers in Italy.

You'd think it would be easy to buy a jar of mayonnaise. Not necessarily. One label states that the product is "light" and "cholesterol free. " Another claims to be "light" and "reduced calorie. " Still another label states that the mayonnaise is "half the calories" and "low sodium. " The confusion doesn't end with the mayonnaise. Up and down supermarket aisles, a barrage of dietary claims awaits the shopper - to the point that a college degree in nutrition seems necessary to make sense of it. "The supermarket aisles really become a mine field of misleading information for the consumer," says Bruce Silverglade, legal director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

A TIP OF THE TOPPER TO THE GIMME CAP The well-made hat is now the property of the dapper few. And if more try to follow their example, how many department stores will be able to fit them properly when it is hard enough to find a clerk to ring up a few pairs of socks? To this dilemma, the headwear industry of the 1980s has found it own answer. It is called the baseball cap, football coach's cap, feed cap or (most revealingly) gimme cap. The old-regime hat was costly, bulky, permanent; the gimme cap is cheap, portable and relatively disposable.

Though it is doubtful that A Tuscan in the Kitchen (Clarkson N. Potter, $24.95) will revolutionize cookbook publishing, its recipe format is a radical departure: There are few quantities given for ingredients, nor are there cooking times. "If you make a mistake in tablespoons, it's not going to hurt you," writes author Pino Luongo, creator of Il Cantinori restaurant in New York's Greenwich Village and Sapore di Mare on Long Island. In Luongo's cookbook, amounts and cooking times are regarded as points of common sense in the kitchen.

(Editor's note: Jane Fonda, like millions of other American women, once put herself through a debilitating cycle of crash diets, pills and binges in the effort to achieve an "ideal" figure. She learned the hard way that the real goal is in achieving your best and healthiest self - losing fat but retaining muscle, raising your metabolism and lowering your natural set-point weight. Now, in "Jane Fonda's New Workout and Weight Loss Program," she makes her hard-won knowledge available to everyone.

Just like people, overweight pets may not be as healthy or as long-lived as they could be. So to help slim obese dogs and cats, here's a recipe for a low- calorie treat from Frances Sheridan Goulart's book Bone Appetit: MUTTRECAL COOKIES. Combine 1 cup sprouted soybeans, a few drops soy sauce, 1 tablespoon vegetable oil and a dash of sea salt. Spread the mixture in a single layer on a greased baking sheet. Bake, stirring occasionally, for 25 minutes at 325 degrees. Serve warm and crunchy.

Spring approaches hesitantly, breaking the grip of winter bit by bit. In small changes, it makes itself known. And then one day you smell it. It doesn't matter that the calendar says it's weeks away. Your nose knows. The world's about to sprout again. Whenever seasons butt against one another, there is havoc in the kitchen. One day a stew is steaming on the back of the stove; the next, it's time to prepare the charcoal grill for another season. Yet there is a way to deal with the fickleness of seasons without extra work or excessive waste.