Healthy Food

SUMMER IS ONLY halfway over, but the kids are starting to climb the walls. You're on a first-name basis with the local burger joint drive-through staff, and you can't take one more day of Disney Channel reruns or Nintendo Wii marathons. If this sounds like you, you're in luck. We searched for unique ways to get the kids out of the house, get them to eat healthy - and maintain your sanity for another 40 days (yes, we counted) until school starts. We asked Cary Borish, co-owner of the family-run Marathon Grill restaurants, for some out-of-the-ordinary, kid-friendly summer ideas.

One of the week's most positive developments was the announcement by Discovery Kids, who provide our children with such fine shows as DinoSapien and Scout's Safari, that henceforth their characters, both live and animated, will be depicted eating only healthy foods. I'll tell you, as someone who was nursed and educated by television, it wouldn't have hurt to see someone munching a carrot stick once in a while. As it is, my notions about nutrition were totally warped by the tube.

Johnathan Russell is the kind of teenager who doesn't just eat his vegetables. He grows them, markets them, and gets other kids to eat them, too. None of this he could have imagined four years ago when he entered University City High School and started working in the school's half-acre garden. Now 18, Russell is helping the school's nutrition program move in a new direction. Literally. He's helped create a new mobile organic store - from writing the business plan to painting the truck a cheerful green - that will sell low-cost kale, tomatoes, chard and herbs in several West Philadelphia neighborhoods.

Family farmers in our region grow some of the highest-quality food in the world. Unfortunately, making a living as a family farmer has become increasingly difficult. As a result, Pennsylvania is losing two farms a day. This is a staggering blow for the families who lose their livelihood - and for our region, which is losing its food and landscape. There also is an impact on public health. As obesity and diabetes continue growing as serious health threats, one has to question the logic of reducing the amount of fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables that are available to consumers.

Canning the sale of soda in Philadelphia's public schools is a good first step, but the district must also improve the nutritional value of its school-lunch program and the snacks it sells, nutrition advocates said yesterday. Citing concerns about students' poor nutrition and a growing obesity problem, district chief executive Paul G. Vallas announced earlier this week that he planned to ban the sale of soda in schools when the district finalized a beverage deal. "This is a strong statement about the role of the schools in helping children develop healthy eating habits.

In the war between Twinkies and tofu, our creme-filled treats just got some major ammo. It comes in the form of a new word: orthorexia. Coined by Steven Bratman in his new book, Health Food Junkies, orthorexia describes - finally - the obsession with healthy eating. Before this word came along, anyone eating health food, no matter how weird and yucky (the food, I mean), had license to sneer at the rest of us polishing off our pound cake. Now their sanctimony is suspect. In fact, it may be proof of a real problem.

All week, celebrities have been eating at fancy restaurants: the Palm, Le Bec-Fin, Susanna Foo. VIPs have been chauffeured all over the city. Just yesterday, in fact, George W. was down the street, visiting Gerald Ford at Hahnemann. Al Sharpton was across the park, harassing the district attorney. Arnold Schwarzenegger and that junior hunk, George P. Bush, lunched three blocks away at Circa. But would anyone famous come to the King of Falafel, the Middle Eastern food cart at the corner of 16th and JFK?

The children at Thelma Peake's West Philadelphia child-care center mind their peas and cukes - and broccoli, beans, oranges and carrots. The 75 youngsters in her full-time program typically get four servings of fruits and vegetables a day before they go home for dinner, putting them a long way toward the five-a-day benchmark that most Americans fail to meet. This is no small feat in a neighborhood where most shops offer little more than hoagies, pizzas and fried foods, where the local supermarket shut down, and where residents say produce is often expensive.

Parents, it might be time to rethink that "clean your plate" mentality. Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have found that overeating begins in children as young as 5. Babies and toddlers eat when they're hungry and stop when they're full, but school-age children gobble whatever's in front of them - and more. About half of American adults and 20 percent of children are overweight. Those numbers are twice what they were 30 years ago, largely because of high-fat diets and lack of exercise.

Mouth feel. Soy foods just don't have it. Make soybeans into tofu and they're bland and squishy. Turn them into burgers and they're likely to become a leaden mush. It's no wonder, then, that soy hasn't caught on much in this nation of mouth-puckering pickles, salt-laden chips, sugary breakfast foods, and buttered everything. Yes, Americans concede that soy foods are healthy, and that has boosted their sales in recent years from practically nonexistent to very modest.