Lunch

LOS ANGELES — The crowd is shoulder to shoulder at Joan's on Third. Power couples buy their toddlers "babyccinos" (steamed milk sprinkled with cocoa), and lithe women with "it" bags poise their forks over Chinese chicken salads. A voice from a loudspeaker interrupts the thrum: "If you are driving a white Jaguar parked in the back behind another car, please move your vehicle. " Just another morning at Joan's. What started as a tiny catering kitchen on Third Street, is, 14 years later, an L.A. institution.

More than 10,000 people around the region will take a fitness-inducing midday stroll Wednesday to mark National Walk @ Lunch Day. Half of them will be walking laps around Rittenhouse Square. Will it make much of a difference? Not if the walkers are looking to lose weight fast. An average person walking at an average pace for 30 minutes a day, five days a week, would need about seven weeks to expend the 3,500 calories that equals one pound. But there is a bigger point, said Gary D. Foster, director of Temple University's Center for Obesity Research and Education, who reluctantly did the math because there is a broader message in this: "Walking is a fantastic thing to do. Because it improves your health.

Hello there! In summer 2009, Michelle was living in Indiana, but traveling with her Cajun-themed food-service business and friends' similar businesses to festivals and fairs around the country. Working a music festival in West Virginia, she befriended Zack, a Philadelphian who was in charge of ensuring that the musicians ate. Michelle came here to visit Zack a month later; he asked if he could bring a friend along to lunch at P.F. Chang's. That friend was David. And by the end of lunch, David was smitten.

Here we go again. At the beginning of his presidency, Barack Obama argued that the country's spiraling debt was largely the result of exploding health-care costs. That was true. He then said the cure for these exploding costs would be his health-care reform. That was not true. It was obvious at the time that it could never be true. If government gives health insurance to 33 million uninsured, that costs. Costs a lot. There's no free lunch. Now we know. The Congressional Budget Office's latest estimate is that Obamacare will add $1.76 trillion in federal expenditures through 2022.

When it comes to keeping employees happy, a pat on the back may be worth more than a raise in pay. At least that's what the 28,383 men and women who responded to our Top Workplaces 2012 survey say. Feeling appreciated at work and believing that their work has meaning tops the list of conditions that matter to Philadelphia-area workers. And although workers want to be paid what's fair, how much they make matters less than how they feel about their work and the people for whom they work.

Charles H. Taylor was having lunch at his Center City eatery with actress Julie Harris when a poignant moment intruded. The pianist on duty realized that Harris had starred in the film East of Eden with the troubled James Dean, who died in 1955, the year the film was released. "He shifted into the music from East of Eden , and she began to cry," Mr. Taylor told an Inquirer interviewer in 1988, suggesting that Harris was comfortable enough to show emotion with him. Though a small lunch place, Taylor's Country Store had its fans, even some marquee names.

YESTERDAY was the annual Oscar nominee luncheon at which this year's Hollywood elite got together and dined on chopped vegetable salad, hors d'ouevres featuring Indochina spiced beef and roasted Asian barbecue duck, a main course of Atlantic salmon, and sorbet with mango sauce and berries for dessert. Sounds yummy. The most important thing on the menu, however, was good conversation among new and old friends. "A lot of people at home think we all hang out together," George Clooney told reporters.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - The first major nutritional overhaul of school meals in more than 15 years means most offerings - including the always popular pizza - will come with less sodium, more whole grains, and a wider selection of fruits and vegetables on the side. First lady Michelle Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the new guidelines during a visit Wednesday with elementary students. Michelle Obama, also joined by celebrity chef Rachael Ray, said youngsters would learn better if they don't have growling stomachs at school.

INCOMING Council president Darrell Clarke treated returning and newly elected members to a private luncheon at the Capital Grille in Center City yesterday - possibly in violation of the Sunshine Act. The meeting was held in a back room of the swanky restaurant. He was joined by incumbents Bill Greenlee, Bill Green, Wilson Goode Jr., Marian Tasco, Jim Kenney, Curtis Jones Jr., Brian O'Neill, Maria Quinones-Sanchez and Blondell Reynolds Brown, and incoming members Cindy Bass, David Oh and Bobby Henon and Mark Squilla.

Shortly before noon every weekday, people in long cotton jackets enter the cinderblock break room at the Dietz & Watson meat plant in Northeast Philadelphia, spread out sheets of white paper, and lay out a picnic-worthy spread of cold cuts, including roast beefs, hams, salami, maybe London broil, and Muenster and American cheeses. Minutes later, about 150 dayside plant workers on their lunch breaks, many still in safety helmets, hairnets, and heavy overcoats, pick up tongs and divvy it up. For those who need bread, there's a vending machine filled with hot dog rolls packaged in plastic bags, two for 50 cents.