Money for Something

Perennial problem for travelers: getting the best exchange rate. Heed this advice. Enjoy.

June 25, 2006

Practical Traveler

How to Get the Best Exchange Rate (and Avoid Fees)

By DAVID A. KELLY

IT is one thing to pay a higher than normal price for a drink on the Champs Élysées, but paying more than you need to exchange currency is a real waste of money. For most travelers, the place to start is with an A.T.M. or a bank, where you are most likely to get the best rate.

"We recommend that people use their debit or A.T.M. cards to withdraw money from an A.T.M. as soon as they arrive," said Tom Meyers, editor of www.eurocheapo.com, an Internet guide to inexpensive hotels. "The rates from European banks are almost always lower than going to commercial exchange counters."

For example, Thomas Cook on Fleet Street in London recently offered an exchange rate of 2.03 percent for U.S. dollars converted to British pounds with no service charge, yielding £49.26 for $100. The same day, NatWest quoted a rate of 1.9551 percent with no commission, yielding £51.15 for $100, while HSBC quoted a rate of 1.9766 percent with 2 percent commission, yielding £49.58 for $100.

One thing to be aware of when withdrawing money from an A.T.M. is that it is difficult to know in advance what the specific exchange rate will be. In effect, you have to wait for the charge to go through or for the withdrawal to be debited. In addition, some A.T.M.'s may have fees charged by both the local bank and by your own bank or credit card company, although some United States banks, including Bank of America and Citibank, have relationships with foreign banks and will waive fees at A.T.M.'s belonging to those banks.

But, if you use your Citibank card to withdraw money from your checking account at a foreign Citibank A.T.M., there's still a foreign exchange fee of 1 percent of the transaction in dollars.

Even those fees are less than the fees you'd pay using an A.T.M. to withdraw money from your credit card credit line, since these transactions are cash advances and subject to more fees. For example, for a cash advance from a foreign A.T.M. with a Chase Amazon.com credit card, Chase charges a 3 percent cash advance fee (minimum $10) on top of a 3 percent foreign currency transaction fee, along with 23.99 percent variable interest rate accrued daily. As for exchanging money at a hotel? Mr. Meyers said he tells people to avoid it: "You'll get the highest transaction fees and the worst exchange rates."

For purchasing goods or services, credit cards frequently offer the best rates, although it can be hard to determine what they are. "The process is not transparent," said Tim Jarrell, publisher of Fodors Travel Publications. "Most people don't know until they get their credit card bill how much they'll be charged for foreign purchases."

For example, while MasterCard and Visa charge a 1 percent fee for processing foreign purchases, banks may (and often do) charge an additional 1 or 2 percent. Save money by picking a credit card with the most favorable fees for international purchases. For example, American Express and Juniper Bank charge just 2 percent, and Capital One is especially traveler-friendly, with no additional surcharge, not even the 1 percent charged by MasterCard and Visa.

With hard currency exchanges, some on-the-fly research can be particularly valuable. "If you're changing a lot of money, check out rates at the currency exchange centers and the banks," said Colm Hanratty, editor of hostelworld.com. "Ask them what their exchange rate is and how much their commissions are. It's a 60-second question that could save you $5 to $10 each time."

You typically want to do as few exchanges as possible. "Each exchange involves processing, servicing and/or administrative fees; some exchange locations even give breaks on larger transactions," said John Brancato, managing partner of V. Puente Currency Services, an operator of a Travelex Worldwide exchange service at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. According to Mr. Brancato, Travelex's currency exchange provides a lower service fee for larger transactions — for a $100 exchange the service fee is 5.5 percent while it is generally about 1.5 percent for transactions over $500. Some exchanges may even offer promotions such as a "buy back" program that allows consumers to sell their leftover currency back to the company at a favorable rate, in some cases waiving the service fees. For example, upon returning from a trip, for a $7.50 fee, a customer can exchange up to the amount of the original purchase without a service fee, guaranteed at the same rate. The return transaction has to take place at the same location as the first.

Traveler's checks and the new prepaid traveler's check cards are another option. The American Express Travelers Cheque Card ($14.95 issuance fee) is a reloadable, prepaid card that is not linked to your bank account and can be replaced if lost or stolen. The card requires an initial minimum deposit of $300 and sets a maximum balance of $2,750; the funds can be purchased in dollars, euros or pounds. A.T.M. withdrawals using the card are a relatively low $2.50, excluding individual banks' fees. However, traveler's checks and plastic may not be the solution when traveling to remote locations.

WHEN traveling in China, once you leave the large cities, you could have a very difficult if not impossible time exchanging traveler's checks for local currency. In some cases, if you have the wrong types of traveler's checks, merchants may think they're fake and not cash them," said Seth Hishmeh, co-founder of USAS Technologies, a multinational IT consulting firm, and a frequent traveler. "Additionally, when traveling in some countries such as China, the credit card systems outside of major cities frequently do not accept Visa, Amex and other standard cards used in the U.S."

Make sure you check ahead to learn what bank cards or traveler's checks will be accepted at your destination, and have a backup plan. "The main thing is to realize that different things work better in different places," said Edward Hasbrouck, author of "The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World."

"That's why you should take money in a mix of forms — an A.T.M. card, a credit card, some traveler's checks, some large-denomination bills like $100 for changing, some small-denominations (U.S. $1 through U.S. $20 bills for small purchases directly in dollars), rather than counting on any one method to work everywhere," he said.

Of course, cash is still king in many places. "You may be able to get discounts by paying in local currency," Mr. Hishmeh said. "For example, when traveling in India you can often save money by paying in their local currency and getting the local rate; paying in U.S. dollars or traveler's checks will cause you to pay much more."

Summer Spirit(s)

Photo:

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

The casual elegance of prosecco makes it the perfect wine for summer.

June 21, 2006

Wines of The Times

A Sip, a Smile, a Cheery Fizz

By ERIC ASIMOV

HEY, you! Yeah, you, Mr. Mucketymuck, in your black power suit and shades. You never let 'em see you sweat, right? You and your air-conditioning turned all the way up — at home, in the car, in the office, in the beach house — you like to see the others shiver. You're the man, starched and creased. While around you people wilt and melt into puddles, you're triumphant, with your big, expensive cabernet in the dark, chilly steakhouse.

You're not the kind of guy who'd ever be caught dead with a prosecco, are you? What is that, you ask, some kind of girly wine? Hey, did someone turn off the air-conditioning? Now what will you do? It's getting hot. It's getting sweaty. You can't take it, can you? You've got to go? Exit, stage left!

Whew. Sorry about that, but I had to get rid of that guy. So annoying! And he does not understand summer, or summer drinking. Of course he wants a prosecco! Prosecco was made for summer, when you need something blithe, airy and carefree. It's a light summer dress, a summer thriller for the beach, an entertainment, not a burden. It's a social drink. You cannot brood over a prosecco.

Not that I have anything against air-conditioning on a scorching day, but drinking prosecco is more like the gentle cooling of a rippling breeze, always leaving you wanting more. It's almost meant to be consumed outdoors in the heat or the shade, partly because it's low in alcohol, generally under 12 percent. It's refreshment, and it's stylish, too. Millions of Italians can't be wrong about that.

Nobody drinks sparkling wine as regularly as the Italians do. It's made in almost every Italian wine region, and no meal seems complete unless it starts with a frothing glass of spumante, the melodious Italian word for sparkling wine. Among all the Italian sparkling wines, prosecco is rising rapidly in popularity, trailing in the United States only that old standby, Asti spumante, which takes its name from its region of origin. And why not? You could not ask for a better value in outdoor sparklers, in the garden, at the beach, up on the roof or under the boardwalk.

The Dining section's tasting panel was thinking summery thoughts recently when we sampled 25 proseccos. We felt lighthearted, able to transcend the relatively gloomy confines of our Midtown office with the cheery hiss of bubbles in the air. Florence Fabricant and I were joined at the tasting by Piero Trotta, wine director at San Domenico, and Marco Albanese, wine director at Lupa.

Let's be clear about what we were tasting. All of the wines were made predominantly of prosecco, the grape, sometimes mixed with a small percentage of pinot bianco, pinot grigio or chardonnay. Some, but not all, of these proseccos were actually, to be polysyllabically precise, Prosecco di Conegliano-Valdobbiadene. That is the — here we go again — denominazione di origine controllata, or D.O.C., a designation earned if wines meet certain standards, for example which grapes are used, where they are grown and how the wines are aged.

To earn the D.O.C. designation the grapes must come from the hilly area between the communes of Valdobbiadene and Conegliano in the Veneto, the region of Venice and Verona in northeastern Italy, and the wine must be made of at least 85 percent prosecco.

And yet it's a tricky issue for consumers. Even if the grapes are not from the designated area, or if the winemakers do not adhere to regulations concerning the proportion of grapes used, the wine may still be called prosecco, but not Prosecco di Conegliano-Valdobbiadene. In this case, the wine must be at least 75 percent prosecco.

For example, Zardetto, one of the leading prosecco producers, made two wines that cracked our top 10 list. The Zeta was a prosecco D.O.C., one of only two vintage-dated bottles in our tasting, made from grapes grown in a single vineyard. It was our most expensive bottle, at $22. But Zardetto also makes a non-D.O.C. prosecco, which we liked practically as much. It sells for $10 a bottle, and was our best value.

Mionetto, another leading producer, makes a half-dozen or more different proseccos, some D.O.C. and some not. We tasted two, both not, and they made our top 10, though truth be told, you can't even call Mionetto's Sergio a prosecco because it's only 70 percent prosecco.

Does it really matter? After all, if you think too hard about prosecco, you are defeating the purpose of this breezy, cheerful wine.

Go off with Mr. Mucketymuck — no prosecco for you!

Whatever the source or proportion of the grapes, the wines are made in the same way, and in the end, all of these bottles will be found on the prosecco shelf at the wine shop, regardless of what they are called.

Almost all proseccos rely on the Charmat process, a large-scale method of producing sparkling wines, named for the French inventor, Eugène Charmat. The process shortcuts the costly in-the-bottle secondary fermentation that gives Champagne its fizz, price tag and sense of gravitas. Champagne needs more time to evolve than the more accessible prosecco, and generally seems more austere than friendly.

All right, so our top four wines were all prosecco D.O.C.'s. Perhaps this is an indication of potential quality, though not all the D.O.C. proseccos we tasted made our list. Other variables go into the bottles as well. Some are labeled brut, and are counterintuitively liable to be drier than those labeled extra dry, which may have a slight sweetness to them. Either way, balance is the most important thing. Though the dry, tangy and refreshing prosecco brut from Drusian was our favorite, we liked the off-dry, peachy Nino Franco Rustico just about as well.

Fairly often I used to see proseccos labeled frizzante, indicating that the wine had a soft, lightly fizzy quality to it, as opposed to the full-throttle bubbles of those labeled spumante. The frizzantes often came in traditional bottles in which the corks were tied to the bottleneck with string.

Although neither the Zardetto Zena nor the Mionetto Brut was labeled frizzante, both had bubbles with a soft texture, reminiscent of frizzantes, that we found very appealing.

It's hard to think of another wine with the lightness and easygoing grace of a prosecco — maybe a rosé. Aside from garden parties, proseccos, like rosés, make excellent aperitifs. One glass, two at most, and you are ready to move on. Unless, of course, you are making Bellinis, the cocktails of sparkling wine and peach purée, for which prosecco is the ideal ingredient.

Now some people may feel prosecco is misunderstood and demeaned. They may believe that prosecco deserves to be taken more seriously, that all this relaxed and frothy talk does not fully acknowledge prosecco's value. To this I say, ridiculous! On the contrary, what is underestimated are the easy, breezy qualities that prosecco so effortlessly epitomizes. Far more wines are taken too seriously than not seriously enough.

Complexity? Depth? Levels of extract? Forget about all that stuff, it's way too hot. Instead, kick off your shoes and socks and run through the grass barefoot. Dive through the waves until the salt brine cakes on your back. Jump into the pool and make a splash. Sing off-key and laugh. Bite into a peach and let the juice run down your chin. That's what prosecco is all about, and if you ask me, that's pretty good.

Tasting Report: Millions of Italians Can't be Wrong

Drusian D.O.C. Brut NV
$17
***
What more could you ask for in a prosecco? Dry, tangy and refreshing with citrus and floral flavors. (Importer: Panebianco, New York)

Nino Franco Rustico D.O.C. NV
$15
***
Off-dry, yet well balanced with peach and mineral aromas and flavors. (Vin Divino, Chicago)

Aneri D.O.C. Brut NV
$20
**½
Unusual, yet dry and refreshing, with aromas of citrus, minerals and anise. (Palm Bay Imports, Boca Raton, Fla.)

Zardetto Zeta D.O.C. 2004
$22
**½
Lightly sparkling, with floral and peach aromas; off-dry, yet balanced. (Winebow, New York)

BEST VALUE
Zardetto Conegliano Brut NV
$10
**½
Peach, apricot and floral aromas; dry and very refreshing. (Winebow, New York)

Mionetto Sergio Extra Dry NV
$18
**½
More full-bodied than most but balanced and creamy, with mellow nut and citrus flavors. (Mionetto U.S.A., New York)

Vallis Mareni Ombra Brut Spumante NV
$10
**
Lightly floral, crisp and refreshing. (Omni Wines, New York)

Mionetto Brut NV
$11
**
Softly sparkling, with persistent lemon, apple and nut flavors. (Mionetto U.S.A., New York)

Riondo D.O.C. Extra Dry NV
$13
**
Off dry, with pretty pear and apple flavors. (Wine Source Selections, South Kearny, N.J.)

Bisol D.O.C. Crede Brut NV
$14
**
Not quite dry, with citrus and floral flavors. (Vias Imports, New York)

At Churrascaria Plataforma on West 49th Street, diners can choose a cachaça from several on a cart or at the bar.

June 21, 2006

Carnival in the Liquor Cabinet

By FLORENCE FABRICANT

JUST as a margarita is often an introduction to tequila, for most Americans the first taste of cachaça, the national spirit of Brazil, is likely to be in a caipirinha, a cocktail made by muddling lime wedges with sugar, then adding cachaça and ice.

"Americans might know the caipirinha but until recently they probably did not know what spirit it was made with," said Matti Anttila, a New York investment banker turned cachaça entrepreneur.

Mr. Anttila is not the only one to see opportunity in cachaça (pronounced ka-CHA-sa), which is made from fermented sugar cane juice. Several companies are working with distillers in Brazil to develop brands specifically for export to the United States.

Until a year or so ago, most American bars and restaurants carried only one brand, if that, of cachaça. But increased interest in Latin American food and drink has changed that.

Mr. Anttila's company produces the Cabana brand. It and two other high-end brands, Leblon and Água Luca, have a palate-pleasing viscosity, a mildly floral aroma and a hint of honey or earthiness in their flavor. They are also more expensive, and come in prettier bottles than lower-end, harsher cachaças like Pitú. Pitú, a best-selling brand in Brazil, was one of the first to be exported to the United States.

"Even though Americans don't drink cachaça straight, they're used to smoother spirits," said James Tramonte, a partner in Água Luca. "We worked with an established Brazilian distiller to reformulate the brand."

Like some other new brands, Água Luca, made near São Paulo, is not sold in Brazil. Beleza Pura, another fairly new top-of-the-line brand, is sold in Brazil as well as in the United States.

Brazilians are accustomed to mixing their caipirinhas with cheap, harsh cachaças, saving the good stuff, often aged in wood, for sipping straight.

"There is a serious world of cachaça in Brazil, but for caipirinhas they use junk," said Cipa Dichter, the pianist, a native of Brazil. "I can't get really good cachaça here so I just drink caipirinhas."

On the cocktail carts that rove around Brazilian restaurants in Manhattan, like the Churrascaria Plataformas and Porcão, there are displays of assorted cachaças; Churrascaria Plataforma has a list of more than two dozen.

João De Matos, the owner of the Plataforma restaurants, said that for sipping straight, Brazilian customers will opt for brands like Rochinha and GRM, which have been aged in wood anywhere from 2 to 12 years. He said that, unlike Brazilians, Americans tend to select the new cachaças like Água Luca even in mixed drinks, including fruit-based batidas and cachaça martinis.

Cachaças are usually distilled in copper pot stills like Cognac, though some are made in column stills, like most rums. The new cachaças for export get special treatment. They may be double-distilled for purity and finesse like Cabana, which is the most neutral-tasting of the new brands, or given special filtration for smoothness, like Água Luca. Leblon is shipped in bulk to France for brief aging in Cognac casks, giving it hints of vanilla, honey and spice.

The new top-of-the-line cachaças cost $25 to $40 a bottle; the lesser brands are $11 to $15. To mix a cocktail with one of the high-end cachaças may seem frivolous, but how else will your caipirinha have cachet?###

Alcohol v. weight gain

Bottoms up (not out)! Enjoy.

Source: Alcohol Problems & Solutions
http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/AlcoholCaloriesAndWeight.html

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Alcohol, Calories & Weight

Drinking alcohol does not contribute to weight gain, according to scientific medical research.

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The Data

Alcohol contains calories, but drinking alcohol doesn't lead to weight gain, according to extensive medical research, and many studies report a small reduction in weight for women who drink. 1

The reason that alcohol doesn't increase weight is unclear, but research suggests that alcohol energy is not efficiently used. 2 Alcohol also appears to increase metabolic rate significantly, thus causing more calories to be burned rather than stored in the body as fat. 3 Other research has found consumption of sugar to decrease as consumption of alcohol increases. 4

Whatever the reasons, the consumption of alcohol is not associated with weight gain and is often associated with weight loss in women. The medical evidence of this is based on a large number of studies of thousands of people around the world. 5 Some of these studies are very large; one involved nearly 80,000 and another included 140,000 subjects.

Alcohol beverages contain no fat, no cholesterol, and very little sodium. Of course, the nutritional value of different alcohol beverages varies.

The moderate consumption of alcohol is associated with better health and longer life than is either abstaining from alcohol or abusing alcohol. However, the health benefits of drinking are associated with moderation [learn more about Alcohol and Health]. On the other hand, heavy drinking is associated with cirrhosis of the liver, breast cancer, and other health problems. The key word is moderation.

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What is Moderation?

Moderation is often described in the US as two drinks a day for a man and one drink a day for a women. These drinks can't be "saved" over time and then drunk in one day. A drink is:

• a 12-ounce bottle or can of regular beer
• a five-ounce glass of dinner wine
• a shot of liquor or spirits (either straight or in a mixed drink)

Remember that the alcohol content of standard drinks are equivalent [learn more about Alcohol Equivalence]. A drink is a drink is a drink. To a breathalyzer, they're all the same. 6 For more, visit Standard Drinks.

Most countries define moderation at higher levels of consumption than does the US. For example, Australia, Italy and France consider from 3 to over four drinks per day for men to be moderate drinking. People are all different. To decide what level is appropriate for you, consult your doctor.

The material on this site is for information only and is not advice.

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References

1. Kahn, H. S., et al. Stable behaviors associated with adults' 10-year change in body mass index and the likelihood of gain at the waist. American Journal of Public Health, 1997, 87(5), 747-754; Prentice, A. M. Alcohol and obesity. International Journal of Obesity, 1995, 19(Suppl. 5), S44-S50; Liu, S., et al. A prospective study of alcohol intake and change in body weight among US adults. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1994, 140(10), 912-920; Hellerstedt, W. L., et al. The association between alcohol intake and adiposity in the general population. American Journal of Epidemiology, 1990, 132(4), 594-611.

2. Prentice, A. M. Alcohol and obesity. International Journal of Obesity, 1995, 19(Suppl. 5), S44-S50.

3. Klesges, R. C., et al. Effects of alcohol intake on resting energy expenditure in young women social drinkers. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1994, 59, 805-809.

4. Colditz, G., et al. Alcohol intake in relation to diet and obesity in women and men. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1991, 54, 49-55.

5. Jequier, E. Alcohol intake and body weight: a paradox. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1999, 69, 173-174; Kahn, H. S., et al. Stable behaviors associated with adults' 10-year change in body mass index and the likelihood of gain at the waist. American Journal of Public Health, 1997(5), 747-754; Mannisto, S., et al. Alcohol beverage drinking, diet and body mass index in a cross-national survey, European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1997, 151, 326-332; Cordain, L., et al. Influence of moderate daily wine consumption upon body weight regulation and metabolism in healthy free living males. Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 1997, 16(2), 134-139; Mannisto, E., et al. Reported alcohol intake, diet and body mass index in male smokers. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1996, 50, 239-245; Landis, W. E. M.. Alcohol and energy intake. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1995, 62(suppl.), 11015-11068; Istvan, J., et al. The relationship between patterns of alcohol consumption and body weight, International Journal of Epidemiology, 1995, 24(3), 543-546; Prentice, A. M. Alcohol and obesity. International Journal of Obesity, 1995, 19(suppl. 5), S44-S50; Liu, S., et al. A proscriptive study of alcohol intake and change in body weight among US adults. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1994, 140(10), 912-920; Klesges, R. C., et al. Effects of alcohol intake on resting energy expenditure in young women social drinkers. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1994, 59, 805-809; Colditz, G., et al. Alcohol intake in relation to diet and obesity in women and men. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1991, 54, 49-55; Hellerstedt, W. L., et al. The association between alcohol intake and adiposity in the general population. American Journal of Epidemiology, 1990, 132(4), 594-611.

6. These are standard drink sizes. Of course, five ounces of a dessert wine contains more alcohol, as does a higher content beer or ale, or a distilled spirit higher thatn the typical 80 proof. The equivalent sizes for these drinks would differ from those of standard druinks, a fact that drinkers should keep in mind. Carrol, C. R. Drugs in Modern Society. Boston, Massachusetts: McGraw-Hill, 2000, p. 77. Because standard drinks are equivalent in alcohol content, it is misleading to refer to spirits as "hard liquor," which implies that drinking distilled spirits leads more quickly or easily to intoxication than other alcohol beverages.

Good Food

Photo composite by Bob Watts/Salon

pictured: Marion Nestle

Supermarket sleuth
Stalking the aisles of America's grocery stores, "What to Eat" nutritionist Marion Nestle tells you how to keep junk food from sneaking into your cart.

By Katharine Mieszkowski

Jun. 12, 2006 | If you've seen "Super Size Me," Morgan Spurlock's hilarious documentary about fast food, you've already met Marion Nestle. She's the only person in the movie who is able to offer a coherent definition of a calorie.

Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food science and public health at New York University, has long been a leading critic of the salty, fatty, sugary junk that passes for food in America, and especially the way it's hawked to kids. She blasts the U.S. government for allowing the food industry to determine public health policy on everything from the food pyramid to transfats. And her books, such as "Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health," have inspired such fear and trembling from Big Food that she's been smeared as a "diet scold" and, even more feverishly, as "one of the country's most hysterical anti-food-industry fanatics."

Nestle's new book, "What to Eat: An Aisle-by-Aisle Guide to Savvy Food Choices and Good Eating," brings her analysis of food politics into the grocery store, giving shoppers advice on what to buy and what to leave on the shelves. Armed with a notebook and calculator, Nestle spent a year in the field -- or, in this case, the produce, beverage, cereal and dairy aisles -- making observations about what's actually being sold. She came away stunned at the blizzard of choices offered up in the average Safeway or Kroger, and how easy it is for consumers to be bamboozled by marketing messages masquerading as nutritional data.

In "What to Eat," Nestle demystifies the American foodscape, exposing the ways that nutritional advice is tainted by food marketers and the diet industry. Readers will find there's much to be learned by taking a 611-page extended shopping trip with her. For starters, many foods with healthy reputations -- most yogurt and fruit drinks and many cereals, even those promoted as high-fiber or high-protein -- are loaded with sugars, and should be treated as dessert, not breakfast. Junk food is fortified and packaged to make it sound healthier than it is: As Nestle writes, "Vitamin-enriched sodas are still sodas. Organic gummi bears are still candy. Trans fat-free snack foods are still salty and full of rapidly absorbable carbohydrates." And, sorry, raw cookie-dough eaters; today's eggs are more likely to be contaminated with salmonella than they were just a few decades ago.

But there are lots of tasty morsels to savor in "What to Eat," too, which, as the title suggests, is actually a compendium of what to eat, not just what to avoid. Salon met with Nestle for lunch in her temporary office at the University of California at Berkeley, where she is a visiting professor this year. She split an enormous, delicious sandwich -- corn, carrot, avocado and cheese on whole-grain bread -- from a local cafe with this interviewer, while reflecting on how portion size has gotten out of control.

You begin with some simple health recommendations: eat less, exercise more and eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Why is the American food industry so at odds with those goals?

Because they don't want us eating less, of course. The American food supply produces 3,900 calories a day for every man, woman and child in the country. That's twice as much food as we need. So, if you're in the food business, you've got to figure out a way to sell it. The choices are to get people eating your product instead of somebody else's, to get people to eat more in general, or to raise prices. In that situation, obesity is collateral damage.

What are some strategies food companies use to make us eat more?

Larger portions. If you put a larger portion of food in front of somebody, they will eat more, even if they're not hungry, even if they're on a diet, even if they're a nutritionist. They're going to eat more. That overrides some kind of internal control.

Having food available is incentive to eat more -- just having it around. And in fact, there's research that shows the closer the food is to you physically, the more you'll eat of it.

As we've started to get food offered in more places, at more times, and in larger portions, there have been changes in society. All of a sudden it's OK to eat in bookstores, and in libraries and clothing stores -- places where there used to be signs that said don't bring food in here, because it would attract cockroaches, and get coffee on the clothes. Now, in most places, you're encouraged to eat, drink and be merry.

Many diets focus specifically on one supposedly bad ingredient -- like fat or carbs -- but don't tell people to eat less, and don't stress calories. Why do popular diets focus on what we eat, not how much we eat?

Nobody can understand calories -- at least most people can't. It's so much easier to think that if I just cut out this one ingredient, I'll lose weight. It's simple.

One of your beefs is that food manufacturers make all kinds of positive health claims about unhealthy foods.

They make no sense at all if you think about it for a moment. Here's a good one.

[Picks up a box of macaroni and cheese off a table in her office. Hands it to the interviewer.]

[Reading from the box] "Super Mac & Cheese pasta and sauce from Kraft. Excellent source of calcium. Good source of vitamin B, C, D and E. Good source of whole grains."

Now, is that not the most ridiculous thing you've ever seen?

"Helps kids build strong bones." That's the calcium and vitamin D.

So, if you eat that it's going to help kids have strong bones.

"Whole grains. Important for good health. Provides one half serving."

(Laughs.) Oh, dear. So, I'm going to have good health if I eat that, never mind how much salt or fat it has. And it's a "Sensible Solution." That Kraft's self-endorsement for its better-for-you food products.

It's macaroni and cheese, and it's not even high-quality cheese. If you use the classic preparation, it's nearly 400 calories. It's got 4.5 grams of saturated fat, which is a quarter of your daily allowance. It's got 600 milligrams of sodium. It has 25 percent of a day's allowance of sodium. It's processed up the wazoo. It's salty. I wouldn't call it a health food. But they're selling it as a health food.

So many things are being sold as health foods now by putting vitamins into junk foods. But aren't most Americans already getting all the vitamins they need?

There are people who have iron deficiencies and anemia, but vitamin deficiencies are not a major public health problem in this country. But, yes, there's the general feeling that when it comes to vitamins, more must be better.

So, if 100 percent of vitamin C is good, then 300 percent must be better?

It must be three times as good.

And that's not true?

There's not much evidence to support it.

So, how would you suggest shoppers navigate the supermarket?

I have these facetious rules. Always shop the periphery. Don't go into the center aisles. If you do go into the center aisles, don't buy anything with more than five ingredients. If you can't pronounce the ingredients on the package label, don't buy it. Don't buy anything with a cartoon on it. If you don't want your kids eating junk food, don't have it in the home.

But even foods that seem very basic, like bread, have misleading health claims on the packaging. For instance, at home I was looking at my bread, and the wrapper reads: "In a low fat diet, whole grain foods like this bread may reduce the risk of heart disease." Well, sure, if the rest of your diet is low-fat. It's almost Orwellian.

It is. It's double-speak. But people fall for it, because they're not trained. If you get people to think for one second about whether eating that bread is going to help them prevent heart disease, no rational person is going to believe that. But you don't think that way. You think: "Oh, this is a healthy product. And healthy products are good." I fall for it, too.

You forget about the calories. [Gestures to the macaroni and cheese box.] This is like taking a vitamin pill, right? And you forget that it's a 350-calorie vitamin pill.

You're enthusiastic about organic food. Why should people choose organic?

One reason absolutely overrides all others. There are no pesticides or chemical fertilizers used in the process, which means it's much less harmful for the environment and for farmworkers. Certainly organic farms can be about as productive, and the food is at least as nutritious, and quite possibly more nutritious than conventional or industrially grown products.

There's been a lot of controversy about the organic standard. What makes you trust it?

I talked to a lot of people who are in the organic business -- farmers, producers, product developers, inspectors -- and they all think it's legit. Everybody involved with it seems to feel that it is a process with a lot of integrity. For one reason: they all watch each other. And really, the only thing that they have going for them is the credibility of the process, and if that process isn't credible, it's going to hurt everybody.

That said, there is tremendous pressure on organic farmers to cut corners, and those pressures come not only from the USDA, but also from Congress and the industrial food industry. To the extent that politics can weaken the organic standards, the industry does stand to lose the credibility that they're now holding onto with their fingernails.

Do conventional food producers want us to think that the organic certification process is corrupt?

Of course they do. They want you to think that organic production is dirtier, because it uses natural fertilizer. They want you to think it's not as productive. They want you to think that it's less nutritious.

What about some of the other claims we see on packaging about production conditions, like eggs that are cage-free or coffee that's shade grown? How can shoppers evaluate which claims to trust?

I think that's a big problem. Some of those certifications have inspection systems, but you have no way of knowing what the integrity of those inspections are. Consumer Reports has a Web site that now has dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of certifiers listed on it.

One of the advantages of certified organic is that it is a unified, centralized evaluation system with a very clear set of guidelines. I find those other categories impossible to keep straight. Not only do you have Fair Trade Certified and Rainforest Certified, but you also have the self-endorsements. All of the big companies are self-endorsing their own products, trying to convince you they are health foods. Ask Kraft why they advertise "Sensible Solutions" as a health food, and they'll say, "No, no, no. We're advertising this as a better-food choice."

You point out that there are many foods that seem like health foods, but when you examine them more closely they're loaded with sugar. For instance, yogurt has this really great reputation, but actually almost all of it has so much...

Sugar. Or candy. There's yogurt that comes with chocolate chips. Or M&Ms. Or things that look like fruit.

Food products that are sold to athletes, like energy bars and Gatorade -- is it really just marketing that makes people think that those things are healthy for them?

Yeah. Rather than a Power Bar, I'd rather have a really good candy bar, if I want to get a couple hundred calories in a hurry. Or a banana.

What about vitamin water? If you drink vitamin water, are you actually getting vitamins?

Oh, sure, if it has vitamins in it. You won't absorb all of them, but you'll absorb some. But why not take a vitamin pill, or eat something? I don't get it, except that they come in a classy bottle. They look gorgeous.

You're buying status. You're buying status and the aura of health. The ones with vitamins have to be sweetened; otherwise they'd taste terrible.

Can you talk about some of the tricks that food manufacturers use to disguise the sugar in their products. Like using four different names for sugar?

[Picks up a box of Reese's Puffs cereal. Reads ingredient list.]

Sugar, peanut butter, molasses, dextrose, corn syrup, cocoa. It's got at least four kinds of sugar in it. It's got sugar. Then, it's got sugar in the peanut butter, molasses, dextrose, corn syrup. All of those are sugar. No wonder it's so sweet. Amazing. Would you feed your kids candy for breakfast? I don't think you would, if you thought about it as candy.

It says, "Good source of whole grains. 12 vitamins and minerals. Good source calcium." It has 12 grams of sugar. 48 calories come from sugar, so in a three-quarter cup, 130-calorie serving about 30 percent of the calories come from sugar. It's awfully sweet, and it has a bad aftertaste, which is from all of the additives, I'm sure.

Are people likely to eat that portion size?

It depends on how old they are, how big they are. That's another thing people don't have an intuitive feel for -- the idea that larger portions have more calories.

Even people who are old enough to know better don't realize how many calories are in a giant soda?

Eight times 100 is 800 calories. Everybody ought to be able to figure that out, but you can't imagine how many people don't make that leap. I've gone around the country talking about food politics, and one year, three times in three different locations in the country, a pediatrician got up and said: "I'm a pediatrician, I have a lot of overweight kids in my practice, and it's not unusual for me to see these kids reporting drinking 1,200, 1,500, 2,000 calories a day from soft drinks alone." Even if it's 1,200 at the low end, that's one-half of a day's caloric intake for an average person, and you can bet that they're eating plenty of other things, too.

What did you find most surprising when you were going aisle by aisle in the grocery store?

The complexity of the choices floored me. For instance, I went to one store and I tried to find out how many different kinds of romaine lettuce they sold. It turned out that they had seven different kinds.

Lettuce is sold by the head, by the bag, by the pound. There is an organic type. There is one that's bagged for salad, in which case you're paying to have somebody cut it up for you. But they were all priced the same -- between $2.50 and $2.99 a bag. Only when I broke each sample down to price per pound, did I see that prices ranged from $1 to $4. But that was very hard to figure out.

And while there are some certified organic meats, mostly there are just "natural" meats. What astounded me was that nobody selling meat could tell the difference between the two. Fish took five chapters of my book to sort out, because there were so many issues, and at the end I threw up my hands and said: get a fish advisory card. You can't do it without it. Nobody can just keep this stuff straight.

So the government and the industry basically says to shoppers: It's your problem to figure it out yourself?

It took me a year to do the research for this book, and sometimes it was days of going back to the store over and over and over again, calling people, and going online, and looking things up in books, and doing the things that researchers do. Consumers can't do that. That's why we have government to try to make it so consumers don't have to do that. But we're in a very corporate-friendly era right now. And government has, in some ways, stepped out of the picture under pressure from corporations.

What's the political solution to that? You argue that we should vote with our forks and our pocketbooks.

And write your congressional representatives, and join organizations. I would hope that one of the outcomes of this book is that people not only feel like they have more control over what they're buying, but also get involved in the political process, because that's where the changes need to be made.

In the past few months, a handful of high-profile books have come out about corporate food and the politics of food. Do you think we're in the midst of a backlash against the food industry?

I wouldn't call it a backlash. I would call it a social movement, a national, if not international, social movement to try to do something about food, for children in particular. There are attempts in school districts all over the country to try to do something about what's going on in school lunches, and nutrition education in schools.

It's easier for people to get involved in politics around food issues than it is around the war in Iraq or climate change. Those are huge global issues, which are so far beyond most people's daily experience, but everybody eats. So, just by the simple act of going into a store, and choosing organic, you're making a statement about the way that you want food grown, and a lot of people are willing to pay for that.

Salon recently interviewed Michael Pollan, author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," and one thing he said was that it might be worth it to pay $6 for a dozen eggs, if they were the right eggs. He argued that a lot of people can afford to pay more for food than they do today. That comment got a group of our readers fired up about how elitist it seemed.

Go tell that to Whole Foods. They're making a mint off of customers who are willing to pay a premium because they believe that what Whole Foods is doing is providing better food in a way that addresses issues, like sustainable agriculture, that concern them deeply.

But the charge of elitism is a complicated one and I take it seriously, since a lot of my career has been about trying to develop better access to food for the poor. I once heard Eric Schlosser discuss that issue, very directly. We were at a business school, and he was being attacked right and left. And I thought he handled it beautifully when he pointed out that some of the most important social movements in history were started by elites. Social movements have to start someplace, and he pointed to the anti-slavery movement, the women's movement and the environmental movements as movements that started out as elite, but ultimately would end up resulting in a better life for a much broader group of people.

For instance, I visited the Edible Schoolyard, which is run by Alice Waters, whom many people have accused of being extraordinarily elitist. Her restaurant is very expensive, but I've seen the Edible Schoolyard, and we are not talking about elite kids here. We are talking about a public school class, very mixed racially and ethnically, filled with immigrant kids, with poor kids.

You bring up restaurant food. Since people eat out a lot more than they used to, what are some strategies for eating better when you go out?

The real problem with restaurant food is the sizes of the meals that they give you. The secret is not to order too much. I was in a really good restaurant just last week, and we ordered a chicken dish for two. And they brought out this platter, and I said: "Two? This is six."

Why have portions gotten so big?

The food industry has to sell more food, and one way to do that is to make larger portions. Also, people are willing to pay a higher premium for a larger portion than they are for smaller portions. If you want to entice people to eat more food, you give them a bargain. People love bargains, and have no concept of the relationship between size and calories. In fact, these days, they feel cheated if you give them what is a reasonable amount of food to eat for one person.

Restaurants can make these larger portions because the big costs of restaurants have to do with the costs of production. The costs come from labor, the rent, the real estate, the packaging. The food itself isn't that expensive.

What kind of changes would most improve mainstream grocery stores?

I would like to see a complete restriction on health claims on food packages. I think that they confuse customers. They're misleading.

I would also like to see a complete cessation of direct marketing to children. That means no cartoons on food products. Period. I would like to see some restructuring of stores to make it easier for people who are seeking healthier products to find them. Start by putting healthier products at eye level. Have occasional cut apples out to taste so you could tell what the differences are before you buy them. Make cooking instructions available for the more exotic things that people do not know what to do with. Show customers how easy it is to cook.

I'd also like to see country-of-origin labeling on produce so that people can have an idea of how far it has traveled. In November, a store near me in Manhattan had four ounces of blueberries for $6. They came from Patagonia. I thought that there was something quite strange about that.

So all this parsing of this vitamin vs. that vitamin -- you're basically arguing is not as important as generally eating a bigger variety...

...of healthy food. Yes, and not worrying about it so much. Just enjoy it.

-- By Katharine Mieszkowski

The Good Old Days

Oh yeah. This is the kind of article for which Keillor became famous BEFORE he ever hosted a radio show. Enjoy.


Remembrance of things past
Modern living is very civilized, but sometimes I long to buy some smokes, lock the kids in the laundry room and crank the Sinatra.

By Garrison Keillor

Jun. 14, 2006 | Times have changed, and I know this because I have children, two of them, one born in the old days and one in modern times. One was born back before seat belts, when a child might ride standing up in the front seat next to Daddy as he drove 75 mph across North Dakota, and nobody said boo, though nowadays Daddy would do jail time for that and be condemned by all decent people. My younger child rides in a podlike car seat, belted in like a little test pilot. She likes it.

The older child grew up inhaling clouds of secondary smoke, and the younger one lives in a house in which nobody ever thinks about smoking, though sometimes a guest has lurked in the backyard like a convicted sex offender, and consumed a cigarette. The elder child was raised on hamburgers and hot dogs; ground meat was our friend; melted cheese made everything taste better. The younger one lives in the House of Organic Leaves, where beef is viewed with suspicion, as if it might contain heroin. The younger one's rearing was guided by a 10-foot shelf of books by psychologists. The older one was raised by pure chance.

I don't miss the old days. Well, actually I do, sometimes. I miss the jolliness. We had lovely illusions in the old days. We felt giddy and free in that speeding car. The cigarette was a token of our immortality. We chowed down on whatever tasted good. We thrived on ignorance. We all were a little jiggly around the waist and didn't worry about it. My in-laws were suburban Republicans who kicked off family dinners with hefty Manhattans, which eased the social strain considerably. After two, my father-in-law and I got almost chummy. He knew I was a Democrat and a heretic in suburbia; in the gentle mist of bourbon, it began to matter less and less. They won't tell you this at Hazelden, but alcohol can be a real mercy sometimes.

Now here we are in the age of too much information. The landscape lined with guardrails. Warnings on everything: "Do not touch when hot." "Sharp: may penetrate skin if pressed." "Open with an extreme sense of foreboding." Security men in fake uniforms stand in a stupor in every mall. A safety cap secures your shampoo bottle. Every week the use of some ordinary thing is found to have potentially horrible consequences.

I'm a parent and anxiety comes with the territory, but it gets to be a burden. Last week, on pure impulse, I drove to my office with my seat belt unfastened. I just did it. Just for the cheap thrill of it. I ignored the warning buzzer. It made me feel young again. I never told anyone this. You're the first.

I imagine going to the doctor one day, and he comes in with the X-rays, a shadow across his handsome features, and he says, "It's disseminated fibrillation of the fantoids. You have six months, maybe eight. There's nothing we can do except make you comfortable."

"Not a problem," I say. "I can make myself comfortable." I head for the nearest grocery and ask for a carton of Luckies. The lady is horrified. She hasn't sold those coffin nails in a coon's age. I walk home with the smokes under my arm and people see me and try to intervene. They hand me pamphlets. They recite the statistics. "Cancer schmancer," I say. "When your number's up, it's up." I light one and my entire nervous system jingles like it's Christmas.

I locate the martini glasses, which had been used for fingerpaints, and I chill them, and I shake up the gin and vermouth in a pitcher of ice, and put on a Sinatra CD, and word gets around. The neighbors come over. They've been slaves to the brutal schedule of their children's social, educational, spiritual, recreational and therapeutic activities, with scarcely a free moment for themselves. "How about it?" I say. "Lock the little buggers in the laundry room and let's party. If they get put into foster care, so be it." I pour us each a stiff drink and slap some beef on the grill, and we have ourselves a whee of a time.

I have myself a reasonably good time on a regular basis, but I haven't wheed in years. Please don't write to me about this. Don't tell me about yoga. I'm not about to go over the edge. I just like to look, that's all.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

(Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.)

(c) 2006 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, INC.###

Mother's Milk

PHOTO: Kymberlie Stefanski has nursed all three of her daughters.

Nothing's betta than Mother's Milk, whether you're a baby or not. Enjoy.

The New York Times
June 13, 2006
Breast-Feed or Else
By RONI RABIN

Warning: Public health officials have determined that not breast-feeding may be hazardous to your baby's health.

There is no black-box label like that affixed to cans of infant formula or tucked into the corner of magazine advertisements, at least not yet. But that is the unambiguous message of a controversial government public health campaign encouraging new mothers to breast-feed for six months to protect their babies from colds, flu, ear infections, diarrhea and even obesity. In April, the World Health Organization, setting new international bench marks for children's growth, for the first time referred to breast-feeding as the biological norm.

"Just like it's risky to smoke during pregnancy, it's risky not to breast-feed after," said Suzanne Haynes, senior scientific adviser to the Office on Women's Health in the Department of Health and Human Services. "The whole notion of talking about risk is new in this field, but it's the only field of public health, except perhaps physical activity, where there is never talk about the risk."

A two-year national breast-feeding awareness campaign that culminated this spring ran television announcements showing a pregnant woman clutching her belly as she was thrown off a mechanical bull during ladies' night at a bar — and compared the behavior to failing to breast-feed.

"You wouldn't take risks before your baby's born," the advertisement says. "Why start after?"

Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, has proposed requiring warning labels, on cans of infant formula and in advertisements, similar to the those on cigarettes. They would say that the Department of Health and Human services has determined that "breast-feeding is the ideal method of feeding and nurturing infants" or that "breast milk is more beneficial to infants than infant formula."

Child-rearing experts have long pointed to the benefits of breast-feeding. But critics say the new campaign has taken things too far and will make mothers who cannot breast-feed, or choose not to, feel guilty and inadequate.

"I desperately wanted to breast-feed," said Karen Petrone, an associate professor of history at University of Kentucky in Lexington.

When her two babies failed to gain weight and her pediatrician insisted that she supplement her breast milk with formula, Ms. Petrone said, "I felt so guilty."

"I thought I was doing something wrong," she added. "Nobody ever told me that some women just can't produce enough milk."

Moreover, urging women to breast-feed exclusively is a tall order in a country where more than 60 percent of mothers of very young children work, federal law requires large companies to provide only 12 weeks' unpaid maternity leave and lactation leave is unheard of. Only a third of large companies provide a private, secure area where women can express breast milk during the workday, and only 7 percent offer on-site or near-site child care, according to a 2005 national study of employers by the nonprofit Families and Work Institute.

"I'm concerned about the guilt that mothers will feel," said Ellen Galinsky, president of the center. "It's hard enough going back to work."

Public health leaders say the weight of the scientific evidence for breast-feeding has grown so overwhelming that it is appropriate to recast their message to make clear that it is risky not to breast-feed.

Ample scientific evidence supports the contention that breast-fed babies are less vulnerable to acute infectious diseases, including respiratory and gastrointestinal infections, experts say. Some studies also suggest that breast-fed babies are at lower risk for sudden infant death syndrome and serious chronic diseases later in life, including asthma, diabetes, leukemia and some forms of lymphoma, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Research on premature babies has even found that those given breast milk scored higher on I.Q. tests than those who were bottle-fed.

The goal of a government health initiative called Healthy People 2010 is to get half of all mothers to continue at least some breast-feeding until a baby is 6 months old. Though about 70 percent of new mothers start breast-feeding right after childbirth, just over a third are breast-feeding at 6 months and fewer than 20 percent are exclusively breast-feeding by that time, according to the 2004 National Immunization Survey. Breast-feeding increases with education, income and age; black women are less likely to breast-feed, while Hispanics have higher breast-feeding rates.

For women, breast-feeding can be an emotionally charged issue, and a very personal one. Even its most ardent supporters acknowledge that they have made sacrifices.

"It's a whole lifestyle," said Kymberlie Stefanski, a 34-year-old mother of three from Villa Park, Ill., who has not been apart from her children except for one night when she gave birth. "My life revolves around my kids, basically." Ms. Stefanski quit working when her first child was born almost six years ago, nursed that child until she was 4 years old, and is nursing an infant now.

She said she wanted to reduce the risk of breast cancer for herself and for her three daughters, referring to research indicating that extended breast-feeding may reduce the risk for both mother and daughters.

Scientists who study breast milk almost all speak of it in superlatives. Even the International Formula Council, a trade association, acknowledges that breast-feeding "offers specific child and maternal health benefits" and is the "preferred" method of infant feeding. The American Academy of Pediatrics states in its breast-feeding policy that human breast milk is "uniquely superior for infant feeding."

Dr. Haynes, of the Health and Human Services Department, said, "Our message is that breast milk is the gold standard, and anything less than that is inferior."

Formula "is not equivalent," she went on, adding, "Formula is not the gold standard. It's so far from it, it's not even close."

Formula manufacturers say infant formula is modeled on breast milk and emphasize that it is the only safe alternative recommended by pediatricians for mothers who cannot, or choose not to, breast-feed.

But while formula tastes the same way at every feeding, advocates of breast-feeding say, the smells and flavors of human breast milk change from day to day, from morning to evening, influenced by the mother's diet. Many nutritionists believe that exposing an infant to this bouquet of flavors early on may make for less fussy eaters who are more flexible about trying new foods and more likely to eat a healthy, varied diet.

"I think of human milk not just as food, but as a sophisticated and intricate infant support system that has evolved over millions of years to provide the infant with nutrition, protection and components of information," said Dr. E. Stephen Buescher, a professor of pediatrics at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, who heads the inflammation section in the school's Center for Pediatric Research.

"It isn't just calories," Dr. Buescher said.

The protection that breast-feeding provides against acute infectious diseases — including meningitis, upper and lower respiratory infections, pneumonia, bowel infections, diarrhea and ear infections — has been among the most extensively studied of its benefits and is well documented, said Dr. Lawrence M. Gartner, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics' breast-feeding section.

Breast-fed babies have 50 percent to 95 percent fewer infections than other babies, Dr. Gartner said, adding, "It's pretty dramatic."

One reason for the reduction in the incidence and the severity of infections is the antibodies contained in the mother's milk. "A lot of this has to do with the mother and baby interacting," he explained. "Whatever the baby is exposed to, the mother is exposed to, and the mother will make antibodies within three to four days." The baby absorbs them through breast milk.

Breast milk also protects the baby through other mechanisms. For example, it contains agents that prevent bacteria and viruses from attaching to cells in the baby's body, so the foreign agents are expelled in the stool, Dr. Gartner said.

The protection is not ironclad, so breast-fed babies will often get a mild infection that does not make the baby sick but acts almost like a vaccine. "What we think is that human milk creates an environment where you get your immunity without the cost of an infection, the vomiting and the diarrhea," Dr. Buescher said. "That's a bargain."

Neonatologists are urging the mothers of their tiniest patients to express breast milk because premature and low-birth-weight babies are particularly vulnerable to infections. Studies have found that premature babies who get breast milk are discharged earlier from the hospital and are less likely to develop necrotizing enterocolitis, a potentially deadly disease.

Breast milk has also been shown to lift the cognitive development of premature babies, presumably because it contains certain fatty acids that aid brain development.

Experts say it is possible that human breast milk produces permanent changes in the immune system, in a sense "educating" the baby's immune system, Dr. Gartner suggested. That may explain why children who were breast-fed appear to be at lower risk for autoimmune diseases like Crohn's, asthma and juvenile diabetes. Several studies also indicate that breast-fed children are at reduced risk for the cancers lymphoma and leukemia.

Officials with the International Formula Council say there is not enough evidence to prove a relationship between early feeding and serious chronic diseases.

Dr. Myron Peterson, director of medical affairs for Cato Research, a private independent research organization which reviewed the literature on breast-feeding for the council, said that studies have found a link between nursing and health benefits but that they do not prove a causal relationship. "It's like the old statement about the rooster crowing making the sun come up," he said. "If you did an observational study on that, what would you say?"

An unpublished report the council commissioned from Cato says "it is not scientifically correct to conclude the lack of exclusive breast-feeding plays a causative role in the development of these diseases."

But scientists are so intrigued about the potential to protect children from juvenile diabetes that a large 10-year multinational study called Trigr (for Trial to Reduce Insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus in the Genetically at Risk) is under way to find out whether breast-feeding protects at-risk children from developing the disease.

And public health officials, excited about mounting evidence suggesting that children who were breast-fed are at lower risk of being obese, have been promoting breast-feeding as a strategy to combat alarming rates of childhood obesity.

The health benefits of breast-feeding may extend to mothers as well. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, extended breast-feeding reduces the risk of ovarian cancer and breast cancer. New studies have also found that women who breast-feed face a lower risk of adult-onset or Type 2 diabetes, and they seem to be at lower risk for osteoporosis later in life.

Immediately after childbirth, nursing accelerates healing by reducing the amount of bleeding and causing the uterus to contract more rapidly back to its normal size. Making milk burns up to 500 extra calories a day, so nursing mothers get help shedding extra pounds from pregnancy, experts say, especially if they nurse for an extended period.

Experts say lactation also seems to have a calming effect on the mother, which may be an adaptive mechanism to ease the transition to life with a new baby. Every time a mother nurses, she gets a spike in oxytocin, which may have an antianxiety effect and help promote bonding with the new baby, said Kathryn G. Dewey, a professor of nutrition at the University of California, Davis, and an expert on breast-feeding.

Nursing may even produce a euphoric feeling, she said.

Dr. Michael Kramer, a professor of pediatrics and of epidemiology and biostatistics at McGill University's medical school in Montreal who has been studying the health effects of breast-feeding among infants in Belarus, found a strong protective effect against gastrointestinal illnesses and a lesser protective effect against respiratory infections. Dr. Kramer is still analyzing data on obesity, I.Q., behavior and blood pressure.

"It can't do all of the things that are being claimed for it," Dr. Kramer said, injecting a note of caution into the debate. "But it probably does some of them."
###

Provence

Vincent Laforet for The New York Times

The pool at the Jas de Bouffan, Cézanne's family home, where he often painted in the back garden.

Provence. That says it all.

Enjoy.

The New York Times
June 11, 2006
Cézanne's Provence
By BARBARA IRELAND

MAYBE the hill wasn't all that steep. But each expensive-looking modern house I slowly passed along the way definitely looked down on one next-door neighbor and up toward the other. And at noon on a bright late spring day in the heart of Provence, the hot sun was good for an extra 5 degrees of pitch. Puffing my way up this narrow street, as cicadas buzzed and the occasional tiny Renault whipped by, I had an insight: Paul Cézanne wasn't just an artist; he was an athlete.

In the tiny, deserted park at the top, a footpath led farther upward in miniature switchbacks, defined by white stones and sweet-smelling flowering plants popular with the bees. But feet and bicycle tires had worn a more expedient route through the grass, straight up to the point where, at last, it was time to stop and turn around.

And there it was, the panorama that Cézanne, into his 60's and carrying his painter's gear, had climbed up here from his studio to paint, day after day, over and over to the point of obsession. Undulating lines of dark cypresses and pine separated the pastel fields sloping down for miles, a demonstration, in the clear light that everyone seems to remember from Provence, of how many rich tones can come under the single word "green." Red tiled roofs gleamed from small, distant houses. And beyond all that, jutting into the brilliant blue sky, was Cézanne's mountain, Mont Sainte-Victoire.

A few weeks earlier, on a chilly day in Washington, I had wandered, dazzled, through the "Cézanne in Provence" show at the National Gallery, one of several events being held this year to mark the 100th anniversary of the artist's death. Sometimes I merged with the flow of the crowd holding onto audio players and taking studied looks; other times I fought back against the current for one more view of a painting too lovely not to be seen again: the cluster of dark trees lent from the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the scene of a house and a stand of chestnuts that belongs to an unimaginably lucky private collector and, last, four striking paintings done in this exact spot, with Mont Sainte-Victoire progressing steadily, always eloquently, toward the abstraction that Cézanne was first to imagine and didn't live to see. Cézanne wasn't the only artist attracted to Provence, of course. But unlike Van Gogh, Picasso and Matisse, who all eventually settled in to paint in southern France, Cézanne was a born Provençal, intimate with this landscape down to the soul and the bone. More than anyone else, he is responsible for the familiar image of Provence as a kind of scenic rural paradise of small ocher-colored houses and immense piles of stone scattered among peaceful farms. Yet he wasn't romantic. If he thought a painting of his was getting even slightly prettified, he hacked it up with a palette knife. He wanted to convey beauty that was authentic, and at home around Aix-en-Provence, he was sure he saw it.

What a tour guide to Provence.

"This is southern France," Henri Pons, Aix's director of tourism, said with a broad smile when my daughter and I, Provence novices, asked whether tickets were required to see the Cézanne family home and the abandoned quarry where he painted for a while, both open with well-interpreted tours for the first time this year. "You should have a reservation," he said, "but if you just go, they will probably let you in."

It wasn't the first reminder that we were not in Paris. Even the drivers zipping around the main traffic circle seemed more laid back, as if they viewed the French sport of aggressive driving more as a friendly game of neighborhood football than a Super Bowl. Linguists were hard to find, and our high-school French awkwardly met Aix high-school English. But most people had apparently imbibed the sunshine, and soon we were drinking it in, too, waking every morning to find that a little more tension had fallen away.

We showed up cold at the Jas de Bouffan, a three-story manor house recognizable from the paintings as soon as we passed the gate and started through a colonnade of majestic plane trees. No reservations? Oh, well, a way would be found. Almost immediately, a young woman materialized to whisper an English byplay as we joined French visitors watching Cézanne images projected on a bare wall. Once, he had actually painted them there.

AS a Cézanne pilgrim, I knew the stories. The Jas de Bouffan was built of the golden local stone in 1730; Cézanne's father bought the place in 1859, when he was somewhere on his way up from hatmaker's apprentice to wealthy banker and Paul, his only son, was 20. The guide led us out back, and we walked around the lawn and the reflecting pool and looked back at the elegant house from the shade of the chestnut trees. When the Cézannes lived here, there was even a view of Mont Saint-Victoire. No wonder Cézanne kept leaving Paris to go home and paint the backyard.

The scene looked like the paintings and yet not like the paintings, and not just because some things had changed. Here, comparing reality to a fresh memory of the paintings, it seemed that he had refined the scene at the same time he stripped it to essentials. "Cézanne is not easy," the art critic Michael Kimmelman wrote in The New York Times in 1996, calling him both "challenging" and "moving." But becoming a Cézanne fan is not difficult at all.

The Jas de Bouffan was also ground zero of Cézanne's long-running father problem. Cézanne Sr., no art lover, wanted Paul to take over the bank. In the end, he gave in and supported Cézanne while he painted, but grudgingly, keeping the leash short and the monthly allowance skimpy for the next 25 years. In Cézanne's portrait of him at home in the Jas, included in the exhibition, he looks like a man to be reckoned with.

French southern hospitality worked again at the Bibémus Quarry, where we arrived late after being pleasantly lost for hours among green fields sprinkled with red wild poppies. Our reservation had expired, but we were allowed to follow a group of French tourists and their enthusiastic guide through a hot, arid landscape of dusty paths, gnarled pines and big chunks of golden rock. The quarry was already abandoned when Cézanne tramped through it as a teenager with his school buddy Émile Zola (yes, that Zola), getting an early start on the athleticism. He returned in the 1890's to paint, fascinated by the huge, cubelike stones amid irregular green branches. In front of a rustic old stone house he rented, the guide led us to something that probably shouldn't have been a surprise: another jaw-dropping vista of Mont Sainte-Victoire.

Wimps compared to Cézanne, who in his younger years, at least, used to walk out here from town, we climbed gladly into our air-conditioned car and drove back into Aix. It was time for an urban experience.

A university town of 140,000, Aix spills out from a core of 18th-century buildings made of the golden Bibémus Quarry stone. Tall plane trees line the Cours Mirabeau, a boulevard with splashing fountains near a warren of old winding streets now devoted to 21st century shopping. Cézanne met friends for dinner at Les Deux Garçons, open on the Cours since 1792 (although as a notorious loner, he wasn't one for hanging out in cafes). Stylish students, chic older couples and the inevitable tourists meet there now. There are outdoor tables, but the cool, smoke-free dining room, tastefully unmodernized from its traditional high-ceilinged, gold-trimmed decoration, looked inviting.

Our slender, urbane waiter, wearing a long white apron, gave us a dignified version of the genial Provençal smile as he poured a fruity white wine. We chose the formula meal, beginning with a succulent gazpacho served in a tall glass. The fish entrée turned out to be "poisson selon arrivage," a mold of deliciously seasoned mashed potato and chunks of cod. For dessert, it was necessary to try the chocolate mousse, which was dark and rich.

The waiter asked where we were from. "Ah, New York," he said when we answered, closing his eyes, raising his fingers to his lips and sweeping his arm up and away to kiss the air. It took a moment to reflect that some people might actually want to get away from Aix-en-Provence.

Downtown again a few days later, we stood outside a store on a narrow pedestrian-filled street and talked Cézanne with Marci Hohenstein, a lively retiree from Blaine, Wash., who was traveling around Europe on a budget and a spirit of adventure. She was at the shop in search of comfortable shoes (crucial on Aix's cobblestones), but she was in town because of Cézanne.

"I took a couple of art classes and I love his work," she said. "I want to see where he painted. I want to see the countryside." She and a friend, Harry Huvner of Escondido, Calif., having tramped in the painter's footsteps around the city, were booked that afternoon on a Cézanne tour.

It was a market day, and around us a purposeful crowd pushed folding carts and baby strollers. toward three central squares jammed with several supermarkets' worth of fresh food: spring vegetables, strawberries, freshly cut meat and oysters, live quails in cages, herbs and honey and artisan versions of the local almond-paste confection called the calisson. The atmosphere of the Aix market is endangered in summer by fleets of tourist buses, we had heard, but on this May day, the only glaringly obvious outsiders were gathering around a tour director holding up a sign printed in Italian. Cézanne left us no records for comparison; he didn't paint colorful markets or much of Aix, preferring the natural scenes outside town. But aside from the plastic bags, the market we saw couldn't have been much different than it was in his day.

We stopped at a Le Pain Quotidien cafe and then realized that some fish sellers had set up their cleaning operation a few feet away. But the local families and couples eating from breakfast trays at the outdoor tables didn't seem to mind, so we joined them. The bread was fresh and delicious, worthy of the best Paris boulangerie; the toppings were indulgent: not only butter and jam, but also pots of liquid chocolate in several shades of brown and white.

We staggered away and headed away from the market toward a more wholesome attraction, a luxury spa built on the site of Aix's second-century Roman baths. In the tiled lobby, we inspected the ruins preserved behind glass and sampled the mineral water. But we passed up the opportunity to join the serene-looking patrons lounging in terry robes.

We still had pilgrimage villages to hit: Le Tholonet, where Cézanne favored a small restaurant now called Le Relais Cézanne. Gardanne, where he painted small stone houses as a series of boxes and set off the train of observation that Picasso and Braque rode into cubism. And L'Estaque, the old fishing town bordering Marseille where Cézanne escaped to avoid the draft in the Franco-Prussian War and later stashed his wife and son to keep his father from finding out about them. The town gave Cézanne his only sea scenes, and Renoir and Monet both visited to paint with him there.

Cézanne himself didn't wander farther in Provence. Even so, we trailed Cézanne veneration to a more distant village, the medieval mountaintop fortress of Les Baux. Only 485 people live there full-time now, but a million and a half visit every year, and walking up the claustrophobic stone streets to look out from the ruined fortress onto a valley of olive groves, we saw why.

But we were really there for "Cézanne's Colors," the current show at the Cathedral of Images, a short walk below the fortress. Part museum, part theater and literally cavernous, this place is a strange, towering display space carved into a huge gray hill of rock. Photographs of artwork are projected onto gigantic backdrops of walls, ceiling and floor. The object is to wander among the images almost as if you were inside them.

It's very dark at first, and inside the hill, we were glad we had brought our jackets. "Froid!" a gray-haired woman clutching her sweater around her warned us as we headed inside on a very hot afternoon.

But though it's a tad unusual, once you're acclimated, the setup works. Cézanne enveloped us, and the clear light projected onto gray walls was truer to his colors than any print or book plate, far closer to the complex, mysteriously beautiful hues in the paintings themselves — the colors of Provence.

"Shape the picture from the color," Cézanne said. "That's the point." And standing in the midst of his green-on-green trees, golden rocks and blue, blue sea, all blown up to gigantic size, with worshipful choral music echoing around the rocks, even the least artistically gifted Cézanne fan begins to get the idea.

If You Go

The central event in Provence's Year of Cézanne, marking the 100th anniversary of Paul Cézanne's death, is "Cézanne in Provence," an exhibition of 120 of his oils and watercolors painted in and around Aix-en-Provence. The show left Washington in May and opened Friday in Aix, which despite being Cézanne's home, ordinarily has only eight of his paintings to display. It runs until Sept. 17 at the Musée Granet on the Place Saint-Jean-de-Malte, giving travelers a rare opportunity this summer to see Cézanne works and then go to the places where they were painted.

Tickets are specific for the day and the hour and cost 10 euros ($13, at $1.31 to the euro) for adults and 7.50 euros for students 13 to 25; children are admitted free. The tickets can be bought from outside France through the FNAC agency at 33-1-41-57-32-12 or in Aix-en-Provence at the Office of Tourism, 2, place du Général de Gaulle, 33-4-42-16-10-91, www.aixenprovencetourism.com.

In mid-May, tickets were already hard to get for June, though still plentiful for later, Henri Pons, Aix's tourism director, said. Travelers should reserve a date and an hour to see the exhibition first, said Hubert Dalbeau, manager of the Best Western Le Galice hotel in Aix-en-Provence, before reserving flights and rooms.

Tickets for the Jas de Bouffan, Cézanne's studio and the Bibémus quarry, 5.50 euros each, and combination tours of Cézanne sites are available at the Aix tourism office.

GETTING THERE

Several airlines have flights between American cities and Marseille, the most convenient airport to Aix-en-Provence. A Web search in early June found flights from New York for late June from $1,150.

WHERE TO STAY

Aix-en-Provence has dozens of hotels, guest houses and bed and breakfasts, as well as apartments available for weekly rental.

Le Grand Hôtel Mercure Roi René, 24, boulevard du Roi René, 33-4-42-37-61-00, www.mercure.com, is a full-service hotel a short walk from Aix's historic center. In June and July, doubles start at 215 euros.

Best Western Hotel Le Galice, 5-7 route de Galice, 33-4-42-52-75-27, near the Jas de Bouffan and the major highways out of town, is a well-managed American-style hotel popular with French tourists. Doubles start at 140 euros in June and July.

Le Manoir, 8, rue d'Entrecasteaux, 33-4-42-26-27-20, an economy option in the heart of the old city of Aix , is in a converted abbey. Doubles start at 70 euros through the year.

For a countryside experience with meals available on premises, stay in one of the rooms at the hotel-restaurant Relais Sainte-Victoire, Avenue Sylvain Gautier in Beaurecueil, 33-04-42-66-94-98. Rooms range from 61 to 100 euros through the year.

WHERE TO EAT, DRINK AND RELAX

Les Deux Garçons, 53, Cours Mirabeau, 33-4-42-26-00-51, serves three meals a day in a preserved antique interior and at outdoor tables. A three-course menu without wine costs 27.80 euros.

At the Relais Sainte-Victoire, a four-course dinner for two, with a glass of wine each, was 72 euros.

Le Pain Quotidien, 5, Place Richelme, 33-4-42-23-48-57, serves a breakfast tray of breads and toppings, with coffee or tea, for 9 euros.

The Sextius Thermal Baths, 55, cours Sextius, 33-4-42-23-81-82. The average cost for spa treatments is 100 euros a day.

ELSEWHERE IN PROVENCE

L'Estaque artist tours are given through the Marseille Office of Tourism, 33-4-91-13-89-00; www.marseille-tourisme.com.

The Cathédrale d'Images, Route de Maillane, Les Baux de Provence, 33-4-90-54-38-65 is showing "Cézanne's Colors" through Jan. 7. Admission: 7.30 euros.
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Venice - authentically, inexpensively.

Venice. "Who cannot love this city, cannot love life." - me. That's right. Me. I just said - er - wrote that. I even loved the LAS VEGAS version in a few small respects - mainly because it at least evoked some of the splendor of the original. But more than the subject of this article is the attitude - read between the lines about the goal and aim of the author. I agree with him almosst completely. Enjoy.


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June 7, 2006
Frugal Traveler
Making the Most of Venice
By MATT GROSS
As I fought my way through the tourists shuffling toward Piazza San Marco — the whirling gravitational center of Venice — I came to two disturbing realizations: First, that I would soon have to fight my way back through the crush; and second, that whether I liked it or not, I was a tourist myself.

For two days, I had been trying to assume the life of a regular Venetian, a more authentic and potentially cheaper way to experience a city that attracts some 19 million visitors every year. I'd already failed once, a week before, having fled Venice when I mistakenly booked a hotel in a distant suburb, Lido di Jesolo. But in Bologna, I'd begun to feel the pull of the Venice, and returned by train (7.90 euros) for this, the fourth in my series of weekly round-the-world Frugal Traveler columns.

This time I stayed in the correct Lido, which many readers smartly recommended as a cheaper alternative. The long, skinny island is a few minutes from central Venice by vaporetto, the bus-like boats that connect the 118 islands that make up Venice. A three-day vaporetto pass is easily worth the 25 euros (even if the operators rarely check tickets; see www.actv.it for details).

Lido has three things the rest of Venice does not: cars, a beach and affordable hotels. Mine was the Hotel Villa Parco (Via Rodi, 1; 39-41-526-0015; www.parco.venicehotels.com) a slightly shabby but clean spot a short walk from the vaporetto. It was 40 euros a night (booked through Venicehotel.com), a steal considering that similar hotels can cost several hundred in the high-season.

After checking in that afternoon, I immediately set out for Dorsoduro, one of Venice's six sestieri, or districts. Several readers, along with my friend Jeff, a former resident who was visiting his family there, had called it the antithesis of touristy Venice — that postcard world of exorbitant gondola rides (once around the city: 80 euros), masked street performers and famously flooded streets. Dorsoduro, on the other hand, is where locals live, work and play, and there is no better place to watch them — and pretend to be a real Venetian yourself — than Campo Santa Margherita.

The campo is shaped like a T, with the former church of Santa Margherita (now an auditorium) at one end, a handful of fishmongers and vegetable stands along its center, and a flea market at the other end, where vendors in small white tents sell Italian comic books, colored glass and vintage cameras. (I paid 10 euros for an etching of three chickens.)

Yes, tourists make their way here, but not so many as to disrupt the flow of daily Venetian life. Come by on a sunny weekend afternoon to see the neighborhood in full swing. There's that fishmonger you saw earlier, up to her elbows in squid guts; now she's strolling the square, dolled up in a brown leather jacket. There's that German who builds boats, breaking into a business that was until recently a Venetian-only tradition. And there's the laughter and occasional temper tantrums of young children, blowing soap bubbles and playing soccer outside a bank.

You won't find many Bellinis here, the cocktail of peach juice and prosecco sparkling wine that was invented, or at least made famous, by Harry's Bar in Venice, the former haunt of Ernest Hemingway. The drink now sells for 14 euros — beyond the budget of most writers today, especially this one. Instead, everyone drinks spritz, a quintessential Venetian cocktail made of prosecco and Campari (or sometimes Aperol). It's also a lot cheaper — 2 euros at the outdoor tables at Caffe Rosso (Dorsoduro 2963; 39-41-528-7998).

The campo is also lined with cheap eats. Pizza al Volo (Dorsoduro 2944; 39-41-522-5430) has large thin-crust slices for 1.80 euros and is adored by the summer interns at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice's modern art museum. For a more indigenous evening snack, go for cichetti — Venice's answer to tapas — at Il Cantinone già Schiave (Dorsoduro 992; 39-41-523-0034), a short walk from the campo, where dishes like baccala mantecato (herbed salt cod served on hearty bread) cost about a euro each.

But after a long morning spent exploring the neighborhood, I found myself still hungry, so I met up with Jeff and his young daughter, Elisa, at one of their favorite haunts, Osteria ai Carmini (Dorsoduro 2894/A; 39-41-523-1115). The spaghetti with cuttlefish ink was excellent, as was the "dessert" of salty calamari friti, served in a paper cone to go. My share of lunch came to 19 euros, including wine and an unavoidable cover charge of 2 euros; not absurdly low (this is Venice, after all) but delicious, gut-busting and probably half what I would've paid near Piazza San Marco. (And I made up for it later by spending just 6.40 euros on pizza for dinner.) Plus, I got to rub elbows with more locals going about their daily routine. Other vignettes opened up as I became lost in the maze of alleyways that often dead-ended at a frothy celadon canal. Purple flowers sprouted from a wall grating. A well-tended shrine to the Madonna stood in a dark, wet corner. Opera singers practiced arias as they walked home. For a few moments, I found myself forgetting that I was tourist.

Indeed, I even found myself imaging what it would be like to really live here: to ride the vaporetto to work, to be surrounded by centuries-old beauty, to kvetch about the waterlogged streets and sinking campos. Was I actually beginning to like the city I had expected to revile?

The illusion did not last long. On my last day, as I wandered farther from Campo Santa Margherita, I began to brush up against touristy Venice. The first sign was, well, a sign — it pointed toward Piazza San Marco, or Saint Mark's Square. I turned the other way, only to see another sign, this time pointing to the Rialto Bridge, another must-see (meaning overrun) destination.

Like the tourist magnet it is, Saint Mark's eventually drew me in. "To skip it," Jeff told me, "would be like going to Cambodia and not going to Angkor Wat." Or perhaps like going to New York City and skipping Times Square. So I reluctantly reversed course. Before long, I was surrounded by more and more tourists, until we resembled a secular pilgrimage armed with digital cameras and shopping bags, whispering "permesso" and "scusi" as we surged awkwardly forward.

It was more crowded than I had expected, in part because there were as many pigeons as people. (Bird-flu-phobics, stay clear.) The piazza's herringbone brick expanse was bordered on three sides by the stately but weather-worn Doge's Palace and the Venetian Procuraties. At the other end was Saint Mark's Basilica, the 1,000-year-old onion-domed symbol of Venice's military and artistic glory. Entrance was free, so I wormed my way inside.

I stumbled over the undulating mosaic floors — tiled in a dizzying variety of shapes, hues, and stones — and gazed up at the soaring gold ceilings with their dark, stern imagery of Old and New Testament scenes. It was a relief from the sentimentality of so many Italian churches, except that pigeons pecked at my feet and a woman's cellphone kept ringing.

Desperate for some space to call my own, I snapped a few obligatory photos (technically against the basilica's rules) and headed back to Dorsoduro. I darted down a side street, and then another, and soon arrived at the Grand Canal.

Luckily, there was a traghetto, a ferry-like gondola that ordinary Venetians use to cross the canal in lieu of a bridge. I got my tourist thrill without feeling like a tourist — a boat ride on the sunny Grand Canal, with pole-bearing gondoliers in striped shirts and wide-brimmed hats. And it was only a half euro — proving once again that authenticity and price do not always go hand-in-hand, especially in a place as touristy as Venice.

Next stop: From Croatia to Montenegro.

Have you been to Croatia? Share your tips with the Frugal Traveler. Read comments.
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