Food

WHAT WOULD you say if I told you that you could profoundly cut your risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer? Significantly decrease your risk for Alzheimer's disease, too? And, better yet, that you could do all this without spending a single dime? Impossible, right? Wrong. All that and more may be possible simply by following the sage advice of Dr. Michael Mosley, a British medical journalist and co-author of The FastDiet: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, and Live Longer with the Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting . The "Fast Diet" is all the rage in Britain and could take flight here as well.

THE RESTAURANTS and merchants of Rittenhouse Row are gathering again on Walnut Street this Saturday, and that means about 50,000 area residents and guests will be joining them for one of Center City's largest street fairs. The Rittenhouse Row Spring Festival will close Walnut from Broad to 19th streets (from noon until 5 p.m.) and feature food, fashion, entertainment and fun for children. It's big. It's crowded. It's fun. And this year there's a lot of new stuff. * Dunkin' Donuts will be giving out free iced coffee on the 1400 block of Walnut.

On any given day during the last several seasons you might have found five or six Eagles sprawled out in their locker stalls catching some midday zzzzs. In most cases, the players would build themselves a makeshift bed with pillow, their heads covered with a shirt or some other piece of clothing, their outstretched legs obstructing passage through the narrow lockerroom at the NovaCare Complex. There were other places to sleep - the lounge, the trainer's room - and, it seemed, plenty of opportunities for exhausted players to nap under Andy Reid.

SWEET . . . Don't be afraid to indulge your craving for ice cream. So says Arun Kilara, a Pennsylvania State University food scientist. "Somehow people have the notion that ice cream and frozen desserts are major contributors of fat in our diets, and this is not the case," Kilara says. Although it does contain fat, Kilara says, ice cream also contains such nutritional pluses as protein, calcium and carbohydrates. . . . AND SAUER Sauerkraut on pizza? It's all the rage in Montana.

CAMDEN A Camden grocery store manager arrested last week on allegations he stole more than $1 million from taxpayers in a food-stamp scheme appeared in U.S. District Court in Camden Tuesday and was ordered held without bail. Alexander D. Vargas, 34, allegedly bought food stamps for 50 cents on the dollar and kept the other 50 cents by redeeming food stamps without selling any food. He managed the former Eddie's Grocery on the 1500 block of Mount Ephraim Avenue in the city's Whitman Park section, and allegedly carried out the scheme last year, officials said.

A Camden grocery store manager was arrested Thursday and charged with stealing more than $1 million from taxpayers in a food-stamp scheme. Alexander D. Vargas, 34, allegedly bought food stamps for 50 cents on the dollar and pocketed the other 50 cents after redeeming the food stamps without selling any food, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. It is unlawful to exchange food-stamp benefits for cash. Vargas managed the former Eddie's Grocery on the 1500 block of Mount Ephraim Avenue in the city's Whitman Park section, officials said.

COFFEE expert Aaron Ultimo doesn't do drive-through java. He can't remember the last time he had Starbucks. And, until very recently, he hadn't drunk a Dunkin'. Or even a Wawa. Ultimo and his wife, Elizabeth, own and run two South Philly shops. Foodie website The Daily Meal recently rated Ultimo Coffee's locations the best in the U.S. At the Ultimos' cafes - one at 15th and Mifflin, one at 22nd and Catharine - each fresh grind represents a single-origin, sustainable grower.

After serving as a teenage Army sergeant during World War II, Alfred Ciccotelli returned to South Philadelphia to help his parents run their grocery store at Seventh and Montrose Streets, two blocks east of the Italian Market. It was a modest-enough life that he lived above the store with his parents, who had emigrated from the regions of Abruzzi and Campania. But in 1963, he founded what has become the nationwide Italian food importer and distributor of Cento Fine Foods, headquartered in West Deptford, a firm that now employs more than 150 workers.

A new kind of food truck is making its rounds in Camden. The Fresh Mobile Market, a community garden on wheels, made its first stop Wednesday at Mickle Tower, an affordable-housing high-rise for senior citizens near the waterfront. The refrigerated trailer, operated by the Camden City Garden Club, carries fresh seasonal produce and will drive to scheduled locations during the next year, including churches and community centers. Many residents in high-rise public housing don't have ready access to fruits and vegetables, said Mayor Dana L. Redd.

Immerse yourself in different cultures on Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. and celebrate Philadelphia's 10 Sister Cities at the Sister Cities Park International Festival. Event festivities include dancing, music, cooking demos, and hands-on activities. There will be cultural activities and performances throughout the day. The Italian Council's Luigi Scotto will sing, the Guang Hua Chinese School troupe will dance, and Taiko drummers will enrich with a Japanese percussion show. Guests can even get a French language lesson at 3:05 p.m. Other activities include a Cameroonian fashion show and Israeli, Polish and Korean dance performances.

This is an excerpt from Craig LaBan's online chat of May 8, 2013: Craig LaBan: Welcome to the Food Truck edition of our chat! I have two of my favorite food truck owners cohosting: Kiki Aranita from Poi Dog Philly, a Temple-based cart serving Hawaiian snack foods, and Alan Krawitz of Say Cheese Philadelphia, one of the "pioneers" of this generation of food trucks, whose Drexel-based truck specializes in variations on grilled cheese and...

Instead of helping people who have fallen on hard times, Pennsylvania made it harder for them to get food stamps, and hundreds of families may be going hungry at times as a result. The state imposed an assets test to determine food-stamp eligibility a year ago. Since then, nearly 4,000 households have lost or been denied benefits after being deemed too wealthy. Another 111,000 households were rejected for failing to provide proper documentation for the test. Advocates for the poor say the assets-appraisal formula being used by the state Department of Public Welfare does more harm than good.

NEW YORK - Pet food isn't cheap. Americans are expected to spend $21.3 billion on pet food this year, up 3 percent from $20.6 billion in 2012, according to the American Pet Products Association. Walk through any pet shop and you can see why. Store shelves are stocked with high-end meals, from organic cat food to frozen raw dog food. While pricier options might have less filler and more protein, and can be healthier, they are not always necessary, says Liz Hanson, a veterinarian at Corona Del Mar Animal Hospital in Newport Beach, Calif.

The lunch-hour rush is under way at the convoy of food trucks that line Spruce Street near the University of Pennsylvania campus. From inside the cramped Chez Yasmine, Jihed Chehimi is serving gourmet street fare from around the globe - heaping salmon sandwiches sprinkled with caviar, homemade couscous, and cups of Indian red lentil soup - all with a side of conversation that occasionally turns to the science of AIDS. For more than two decades, the Ph.D. in viral immunology was an HIV/AIDS researcher, first at Penn and then at the labs of the Wistar Institute, where the senior scientist explored innate and adaptive immunity.