Nutrition

What puzzles Harry Gaines is that we typically plan our vacations with more care than we plan the rest of our lives, especially when it comes to health and fitness. Too often we neglect to make the investment in exercise that will pay rich dividends in well-being in our 70s, 80s, and beyond. Gaines, 74, a retired textbook-publishing executive who lives half the year in Newtown, Bucks County, and the other half in Florida, keeps a "bucket list" — goals and experiences he hopes to accomplish before he kicks the proverbial bucket.

With all the nutrition advice available to the public, some just-released findings of the Food and Drug Administration might surprise you: Teen-age girls and women from 25 to 65 routinely fall below 80 percent of the recommended daily allowance (RDA) for more than half the eleven nutrients studied. The RDAs are minimum levels of nutrition generally accepted as necessary for good health. The results of the four-year study, which ended in 1986, were published in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

Thousands of Philadelphians are suffering through a meltdown of society's nutrition supply system. Our inner-city communities often lack access to critical sources of food that the rest of us take for granted. This gap has led to widespread malnutrition, a problem for which all of society is paying a high price. After World War II, people and businesses left the city for the suburbs. The result: Philadelphia lost a third of its population, and those left behind are disproportionately the poorest of the poor.

Two athletes, whose faces decorate the backs of cereal boxes, were talking about bike maintenance, proper nutrition and the spirit of competition. Sixth grader Jordan Miller shot his hand up in the air. He wanted the bottom line. "How much money do you make for winning the race?" he asked the two visiting cyclists about next Sunday's CoreStates Championship race in Philadelphia. Jordan's question was one of many asked Tuesday by pupils at Joyce Kilmer Elementary School in Cherry Hill during a special assembly/clinic presented by Michael Vaarten and Mike Farrell of the Team Wheaties-Schwinn professional cycling team.

Pamela J. Gilchrist, 67, of Ivyland, who operated a health and nutrition business from her home for 31 years, died of brain cancer Thursday, Nov. 10, at home. Mrs. Gilchrist established Gilchrist Enterprise in 1980 as a distributor for Shaklee Corp. The firm's products include nutritional supplements, weight-management products, and beauty and household products. On her website, Mrs. Gilchrist explained how she got started in the business. In 1979, she was a stay-at-home mom when a friend gave her a sample of Shaklee's Basic-H, an organic cleaner.

Want your children to eat less? Let them serve themselves. They probably won't dole out a supersize portion on their own. Or pour drinks into tall, narrow glasses rather than short, wide ones; they'll think they are getting more (so will you). With Americans spending billions of dollars a year on fat-loss techniques ranging from celebrity diets to stomach-stapling surgery, the relatively new field of behavioral nutrition examines more down-to-earth questions. Can you reduce the attraction of sweets?

Be honest. Do you eat fewer than two meals a day? Are fruits, veggies and dairy foods rarely part of your meals? Has illness or discomfort changed the kind, or amount, of food you eat? Is it hard for you to shop, cook and/or feed yourself? Has a limited budget kept you from buying the food you need? Have you lost or gained 10 or more pounds - unintentionally - in the last six months? Do you take three or more different prescribed or over-the-counter drugs a day?

The Executive Success Diet (McGraw-Hill, $16.95) is more a nutritional diet book than a traditional cookbook. It deals with taking full control of your health through proper nutrition. It was written by syndicated columnist June Roth, who has a graduate degree in clinical nutrition, and Harvey M. Ross, a Los Angeles-based psychiatrist known for his contributions in the field of nutrient therapy. Roth and Ross present eight steps to health control, all based on getting proper nutrition and handling stress.

Emily Smith says she is confused about the fancy wording on food labels. "When I see a cake that says it's fat-free, I just don't believe it," said Smith, 71, of Mount Holly. "Or it'll say cholesterol free. I just don't know what it all means. " Smith and others can find out in a new video called Supermarket Savvy available at the Rutgers Cooperative Extension Service of Burlington County in Mount Holly. The video is designed to help shoppers like Smith, who may have particular health concerns, to shop more intelligently for food, according to Cheryl Stamato, a home economy program assistant for the service.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group based in Washington that often criticizes food producers, has some honors to bestow. Its current newsletter honors several companies, organizations or governing bodies for their efforts in promoting good nutrition. The winners are: The Grand Union supermarket chain for offering natural beef, free of antibiotics, hormones or chemicals. Fort Jackson (S.C.) Army Basic Training Center for removing salt shakers, serving only low-fat milk and promoting good nutrition in its 27 dining halls.

Sodas, sports drinks and other sugary beverages are an unhealthy choice for kids, according to the nation's leading pediatricians' group, which strictly opposes the sale and advertising of the products in schools. Yet Coca-Cola's Live Positively slogan and the soda-maker's familiar red-and-white logo pop up on the American Academy of Pediatrics' consumer education website, healthychildren.org, in a corporate sponsorship that some health experts denounce as a serious conflict of interest.

Should supermarkets risk locating in certain neighborhoods so families have access to good nutrition?

Pamela J. Gilchrist, 67, of Ivyland, who operated a health and nutrition business from her home for 31 years, died of brain cancer Thursday, Nov. 10, at home. Mrs. Gilchrist established Gilchrist Enterprise in 1980 as a distributor for Shaklee Corp. The firm's products include nutritional supplements, weight-management products, and beauty and household products. On her website, Mrs. Gilchrist explained how she got started in the business. In 1979, she was a stay-at-home mom when a friend gave her a sample of Shaklee's Basic-H, an organic cleaner.

There are teenagers who prefer apples and tossed salads over sodas and fries - and not because they are dieting. Matthew Johnson, 19, a June graduate of University City High School, is Exhibit A. Johnson and his older brother and sister live with their mother, a kidney patient on dialysis 11 hours a day, in a rowhouse they share with four aunts and uncles. He grew up on a food-stamps subsistence diet - eating what he thought was easy and cheap - hot dogs, canned stews, chips.

Sophie Shtendel Levitt, 92, of Melrose Park, a nutrition counselor and educator who taught at Gwynedd Mercy College for 28 years, died Saturday, Oct. 22, at home. Mrs. Levitt was born in Novograd-Volynsky, Russia. Her father died of typhus when she was an infant. Several months later, in 1920, she and her mother immigrated to the United States. Mrs. Levitt grew up in North Carolina, New York City, and Philadelphia. In 1940, she earned a bachelor's degree in home economics from what is now Drexel University, where she met her future husband, Semond Levitt.

Big bosses like to talk about rolling up their sleeves and getting down to work. But the biggest boss at the Campbell Soup Co. actually did so the other day, albeit in a bright-red T-shirt, at Holy Name School in North Camden. "It was a lot of fun," said company president and chief executive officer Denise Morrison, who donned latex gloves and helped prepare and serve a healthful, low-cost lunch to 170 students. The event during Campbell's weeklong Make a Difference campaign also highlighted the Camden company's commitment to reducing juvenile obesity in the city.

It's a shame that thousands of youngsters in New Jersey public schools are needlessly missing a chance to start their day with a nutritious breakfast. New Jersey has one of the lowest school breakfast participation rates in the country. For the 2009-10 school year, only 28.7 percent of the eligible children statewide received a free or reduced-price school breakfast. Districts are doing a much better job with lunch, with 77.8 percent of eligible children statewide receiving meals, but there is still room for improvement.

Despite Jamie Oliver's best intentions, the obstacles to making healthy homemade school lunches are still daunting: busy working parents, limited food budgets, picky kids, the temptations of processed foods at every turn. Yet the solution, for some lunch-packing parents, might be as simple as finding the right container: trading in the American brown bag for the Japanese bento box. With a long history in Japan and variations in Korea, India, and the Philippines, the multi-compartment bento box is not new, but in recent years it has gained popularity as a lunch box among health-conscious parents.

WHEN MARILYN Valerio and her brother Nelson bought The Right Choice grocery in North Philly two months ago, they found that along with just about every chip, candy and soda known to man, former owners Irene and Rassedell Choice had introduced fresh fruit snacks to neighborhood children. At first, Valerio had her doubts. "I go through this with my own kids, so I thought offering healthy snacks was a great idea," she said, "but I didn't know they would sell. I was amazed. " She gazed fondly at the "Eat Fresh, Feel Good" refrigerated case filled with fruit salads, cut watermelon, veggie snacks, yogurt, 100 percent juice and 50-cent bags of grapes, cut apples, plums and peaches.

E accept EBT cards for candy and gum. " I recently saw this message in a local drugstore next to rows of sweets and other impulse items. Printed on small white signs, the notice was placed alongside ads for weekly sale items. Then I spotted more of these messages decorating the candy aisles at another chain. EBT stands for "electronic benefit transfer. " The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) provides aid for children and families in need. One is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)