PartySummer GuideJuly 2010 BROOKLYN FREE Familywww.webfamilyny.com Right bites! Eat your way to better health WHERE TO GO IN JULY? Check out our Going Places The number one choice in children’s dictionaries is a must have for every family! With exciting features, accessible defi nitions, and helpful illustrations and photographs throughout, the new Scholastic Children’s Dictionary is an essential resource that belongs on every child’s shelf. Features: •��More than 1,000 full-color photographs, illustrations, and maps! •��Word histories •��Sample sentences •��Pronunciation guides •��Up-to-date technology references www.scholastic.com SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc. BROOKLYN Family July 2010 Letter from FEATURES 8 Remember: you are what you eat In a confusing food culture, why bother ‘going green’? the publisher BY RISA C. DOHERTY 10 When the diet hits a wall Here’s to health! New struggles as I get closer to my weight-loss goal he debate goes on BY KATHY SENA about good health T and how to keep it. 20 Mom power plugs into the Web For me, the reality is clear. Social media is creating a digital back fence I believe that eating “real BY KATHY SENA food” is an essential to building the foundation of 24 Social Darwinism and city parks good health for all mem- How crowded playgrounds shape your child BY ALLISON PLITT bers of our families. As a COLUMNS result, I have the utmost 28 ‘Maria’ speaks concern about the “processing of our food 2 Newbie Dad supply” and all the additives, hormones, anti- For 36 years, growing up with Sesame Street BY BRIAN KANTZ biotics and other means of mass production BY HELEN KLEIN of food that have made us not only unhealthy, 30 Healthy kids take their vitamins 4 Good Sense Eating but obese. So says the conventional wisdom. But should they? BY CHRISTINE M. PALUmbO, RD We must give credibility to the concept that BY LAURA J. VAROSCAK “we are what we eat”, and return to whole 6 Lions and Tigers and Teens foods, leaving behind the manufactured non- 34 Yoga works MYRNA BETH HASKELL foods that populate the aisles of our supermar- An alternative therapy for special-needs children kets. We have to train our youngsters to eat BY TErrI LEONArd 14 Family Health right and not give in to the mass marketing and DR. PRAMOD NARULA, MD past 50 years of the food industry that have fat- tened up America and shortsighted our good 16 Parents Helping Parents health. We have to read the labels and choose CALENDAR OF EVENTS BY SHARON C. PETERS carefully what is real and what is manipulated. 18 Growing Up Online We have to stop buying the hype. 37 Going Places BY CAROLYN JABS The result of new trends in thinking is that Take the family out and find out what’s going a lot of emphasis is being given these days to on in your town 22 Cinematters promoting healthy ways to eat, cook and ob- BY LAURA GRAY tain the right ingredients to make real health happen. Our local writer, Risa Doherty, has 48 It Figures contributed an article to this issue focusing SPECIAL SECTIONS Summer Snippets on the many greenmarkets and organic food choices becoming more prevalent in every 12 Health Directory 52 New & Noteworthy community. The partnership between local 17 Party Directory The hottest new products farmers and the consumers of our metropoli- tan area is ongoing and growing. Proudly we promote this in our magazines and more will be written about this as the STAff CONTACT INFORMATION months go by. This is a wonderful time of year PUblISHer: Clifford Luster ADVERTISING SALES Address when a great assortment of fresh fruits and 718 260-2587 Family Publications New York/CNG vegetables are readily and deliciously avail- PUblISHer/MANAGIng edItor: [email protected] or 1 MetroTech Center North Susan Weiss able. Make sure your family gets to enjoy them. [email protected] 10th Floor Brooklyn, NY 11201 Happy cooking and happy eating! EDItor: Vince DiMiceli CIrcULATIon Thanks for reading and have a Happy Fourth CreATIve DIrector: Leah Mitch 718 260-8336 www.webfamilyny.com [email protected] of July! Art DIrector: On Man Tse EDItorIAL AdvertISIng SAles: 718 260-4551 Sharon Noble, [email protected] Barbra Wineburg Brooklyn Family, Queens Family, Bronx/Riverdale Family and Long Island SPECIAL ASSISTANT: Family are published monthly. Copyright©2010. No part of our contents may Susan Weiss-Voskidis, Publisher Tina Felicetti be reproduced without permission from the publisher. July 2010 • BROOKLYN FAMILY 1 PARENTING The rocket boys or my 37th birthday, my brother began tearing at the box a scholarship to college, a job with 5-year-old son picked out the like a couple of Gollums going after NASA and the respect of his father. F exact present that he wanted the ring. They had faithfully kept the Not bad. I fast-forwarded to a thrill- to give me. Wait a second, let’s be rocket under wraps for two whole ing scene late in the movie when the perfectly honest here. Those last weeks, and couldn’t last one more boys launch one of their rockets. My three words are completely unnec- second — they wanted to see what sons watched in awe, then asked ex- essary. The first sentence of this col- that bad boy really looked like. citedly, “Can we go launch our rocket NEWBIE DAD umn should read: For my 37th birth- What it looked like initially — now?” BRIAN KANTZ day, my 5-year-old son picked out to their disappointment — was a With blue skies overhead and still, the exact present that he wanted. bunch of small plastic parts and warm air, it was a perfect day for Which is A-OK by me. a long list of instructions. Appar- launch. We set up the pad in the mid- Heck, I think the little guy caught on ently, they thought a fully assembled dle of a local baseball field complex. to my own present-buying schemes. Space Shuttle Atlantis was going to I inserted the engine into the base of Like the pair of primo baseball tick- drop out of the box. Quickly, I tried the rocket and connected the wiring. ets I bought my wife for her birthday. to rally the troops. We were go for launch. My wife duti- Or the surround-sound speakers she “C’mon, guys, this is going to be fully videotaped the proceedings for received last Christmas. great! What an awesome present! later review by mission control. So, what did my son buy him- Building the rocket together will be My 5-year-old counted, slow and half the fun,” I said, only half-believ- steady, “TEN… NINE… EIGHT… ing that myself. SEVEN… SIX… FIVE… FOUR… Turns out, building the rocket was THREE… TWO… ONE…” Pressing his pretty fun. I waited until my 3-year- finger on the black-and-white striped old went on a playdate (I was pretty launch button, the rocket jumped sure that he would just run off with from the pad with a THHHSSSTTT key parts and hide them behind the noise and climbed into the sky. We couch if allowed to help) and then sat followed it with our eyes as it ac- down with the older boy to piece the celerated, went into its climb phase, rocket together. I read the instruc- reached its apogee… and failed to tions and he did the mechanical eject its parachute. work. We talked about whether the The rocket crashed back to earth rocket could make it past the clouds and the recovery team — whooping and all the way to the moon. We with sheer joy despite the glitch — joked about strapping the 3-year-old sprinted across the field to assess to the rocket. Slowly but surely, we the flight. built that rocket and pride beamed After I loosened the parachute in- from our faces. side the body of the rocket, we tried As advised, we left the rocket’s en- again. This time, our 3-year-old sent gine — an insert the size of a crayon the rocket on its way with the touch that is filled with who-knows-what of a button and the vehicle performed kind of propellant — inside its pack- its task — all systems nominal, in aging until launch time — T-minus- NASA-speak. 21-hours. A thrilling lift-off turned into a ma- The next morning, the boys, who jestic flight, which turned into a soft, became interested in rockets and parachute-aided descent. space thanks to their Grandparent’s That night, when the boys went to proximity to Cape Canaveral (and bed, they each rolled over on their the fact that Grandma always buys back, whispered the countdown self? A rocket. An honest-to-good- them space-themed toys) popped sequence, and knifed their hands ness “Model Rocket!” with “Quick out of bed ready, in their words, to up toward the ceiling, replaying the Assembly!,” a “Real Rocket Engine “light that candle.” launch. Soon, they would close their — Sold Separately!” and, by the On this special day, I figured you eyes and dream about the day they way, “!WARNING: Product Contains can never have too much of a good became the Rocket Boys. Lead.” (You know a product is super- thing. So, I popped in my DVD of “Oc- Brian Kantz’s only previous experi- cool when it can get away with plac- tober Sky,” the real-life tale of a boy ence launching model rockets came with ing an exclamation point after the named Homer Hickam who grew up those pump-and-shoot water rockets that words “sold separately” and before a in a West Virginia mining town and went about 20 feet in the air, then broke.