3B LIFE/ (Ctt Cdarlont Thursday, January 12, 2006 Can you be fat and healthy? Continued from page 1B sengers,” said Dr. JoAiin Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. These substances can damage blood vessels, increase the risk of blood clots and cause insulin resistance that makes people prone to diabetes — all without elevat ing blood pressure or choles terol, said Manson, who was not involved in the Northwestern study Still, there is a common misconception that excess weight is nothing to worry about until high blood pres sure and poor cholesterol develop, and those can then be treated with medications. Manson said ‘Tatients say that all the time, and many doctors actually will say that to patients” too, she said. The study “will help define obesity as a disease” in itself, said Dr. Samuel Klein, an obe sity expert at Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. David Katz, an obesity researcher and director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center, said the findings help prove obesity is a real public health crisis. ‘Teople who say obesity has been hyped are wrong,” Katz said. On the Net: JAMA: jcunajuna-assnjorg School cafeteria starts veggie lunch ATLANTA—Miriam • Archibong remembers the food offerings her high school cafeteria used to serve for vegetarians; bland salads and greasy cheese pizza. But salads are “not sufll- d.ent to survive,” she says. “Cheese pizza _ that’s not healthy because of all that grease.” Archibong often brou^t her own food, lunching on applesauce, carrots and: water. Finally, she and other vegetarians at Grady High School demanded and won _ some changes two years ago. Tbday, Grady High has a separate vegetarian lunch line with a menu as varied as veggie eggroUs, pasta salad, vegetarian pizza and sloppy joes made of tofu. “My favorite thing was the veggie burger. It was so good,” said Ardiibong, who graduated in 2005 and now is pursuing more vegetarian options at her new school — Spelman College, an all-girls and historically black sdhool, also in Atlanta. For years, school cafeterias have tried to please students with vegetarian offerings. The American School Food Service Association says more than a third of U.S. hi^ schools have meatless itons that include salads and cheese pizza. However, a new trend-- veg etarian-only lunch lines — has started in the unlikeliest of places - the South, home of the “Stroke Belt,” long known for its trademark filed and fatty focxis and hi^er rates of heart attacks and strokes than other parts of the coun try The urban Atlanta high school’s vegetarian-only lunch line is believed to be one of the first in the country It’s an odd birthplace for such a healthy innovation, consid ering the school is only blocks fix)m the city’s downtown bas tions of Southern cuisine. including the filed chicken and filed green tomatoes at the historic Mary Mac’s Tba Room and the filed peach pies at the landmark Varsity restaurant. Schools in Eugene, Ore., and in other ■, progres- health- conscious cities of the Pacific Northwest are begin ning to look to Atlanta’s example, said Tbm Callahan, senior vice presi dent of Sodexho Inc., the com pany that provides Grady’s food service. Emphasis in the past was simply on making sure there were meatless options, Callahan said. Last year his company brought the sepa rate vegetarian menu to Ei^ene “and now we’re start ing to see some momentum building,” he said. In the middle of a national obesity epidemic in which up to 30 percent of U.S. children are overweight or obese, health officials long have been concerned about what stu dents eat, or whether they eat. For example, Atlanta schools’ cafeterias only serve meals to about one in five high schoolers,^ who aren’t allowed to leave campus for lunch. School officials worry that many of the students either are bringing junk food for lunch or are not eating at all. “There are students who are coming to us on empty and leaving on empty We con stantly have to look at cre ative ways to engage middle and high school students,” said Dr. Marilyn Hughes of Atlanta Public Schools’ nutri tion department. “Tfiat concerns us overall for the obesity rate and for our commitment to academic excellence. We know they never had the opportunity to Committee suggests study of complaints against police THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — North Charleston should set up an independent committee to review com plaints against police officers, a civil rights leader suggest ed. During recent months more than a dozen black residents have j alleged they were mistreat ed by police, com plaining they were stopped for no reason, treated rudely or had their rights vio lated Police appear unwilling to find fault with their officers, said Dot Scott, president of the Charleston chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “If you can never find any wrong within your house, then maybe you might need someone else to do the look ing ” said Scott, who lives in North Charieston. City leaders have discussed holding a summit to deal with relations between blacks and police. While police deny there is racism, officials say they are willing to discuss residents’ concerns. “We’ve done that in the past, and we are always will ing to come to the table,” said Spencer Pryor, a police department spokesman “Our doors are always open to folks if they have a problem.” Scott said she would con sider a summit but the depart ment should first look at itself and “be honest about what is happening.” Scott has complained that last year, police looking for drugs conducted a cavity search on her cousin’s son, a charge police deny Sixteen other complaints were compiled by a group known as the Committee on Better Racial Assurance. Police seem quick to dismiss Please see COMMnTEE/4B reach that if they never had proper nourishment,” Hughes said. But Grady’s vegetarian line has been a popular cafeteria draw. Originally designed for the 30 students in Archibong’s Vegetarian Club, meat-eaters also jumped in line and the cafeteria now serves vegetarian entrees to up to 400 of the school’s 1,200 students each day This past fall, the school district offered the vegetarian option to other schools, although so far there have been no takers. At Grady, non-vegetarian students who graze in the vegetarian line'said they like having better non-meat choic es. “I get the vegetarian meals because they have a decent selection you can choose fix)m,” said ninth-grader Jessica Fortney, 15. “Oth^-wise, I would have to eat the disgusting pizza every day” On The Net: Atlanta Public Schools: wwyvxitlanla Jell .ga ms WORD Of OCX) HHOAr)CAST(NC4 NfT WORK S»0 9-^ .ftA vvoG"; 5AU5»‘ WADE-AM 1340 WADESBORO, NC ...itltli 'Ti'ny i’liny ijivl, ‘JiKvii, ‘Jtniufiii Cn. youth “Kuiiio, /huik, yxuf I'll the y-nmittf, Mti mueh uu'te/ ^Tuue ih itUii ^ UefiieM 1501 N. l-as SFRVif.E Road • Chaflottf, NC 26216 704-393-1540 Week of 01/11/06 thru 01/17/06 10 FOR $10 SALE! Mix & Match 16 Ounce Select Varieties Gwaltney Great Dogs or Bolony 10 FOR $10 Available In The Bakery. 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