Listen To This3lesson 18

Much of the flood-plagued Midwest got more rain today. Flood waters have forced more than 2,000 families out of their homes. Illinois has suffered heavily with 4 deaths and $ 30,000 damage blamed on flooding. There are also reports that one man was killed today in Oklahoma when his car was swept off a bridge. A partially-ruptured dam was in Wisconsin and remains standing but leaking, and officials are fearful more rain could cause it to burst.


A French television cameramen reported kidnapped in Lebanon on Sunday has been freed according to the French Foreign Ministry. A spokesman says Jean Marc Srucie was released today in the southern suburbs of Beirut and has returned to the Christian east sector of the city. No group claimed responsibility for his kidnapping and the Foreign Ministry did not provide any details about his captivity or his return.


President Reagan paid tribute today to former president Jimmy Carter during dedication ceremonies for Mr. Carter's presidential library near Atlanta. President Reagan, who soundly defeated Carter in the 1980 election, said there was no need to downplay differences between the two men: "Our very differences attest to the greatness of our nation, for I can think of no other country on earth where two political leaders could disagree so widely, yet come together in mutual respect." Mr. Reagan went on to say former President Carter graced the White House with his passion, intellect and commitment. The library was dedicated on Mr. Carter's sixty-second birthday. And President Reagan advised his predecessor that life begins at seventy.


There was more rain in the Midwest today, where several states are facing rising flood waters. Thousands of people in Illinois and Wisconsin have been forced from their homes. And in Oklahoma, the State National Guard was called upon to rescue stranded homeowners who had been cut off and trapped. In northeastern Illinois, the floods follow 5 straight days of heavy rain. Cheryl Coralie of member station, WBEZ, reports that the governor of Illinois was on the scene with a promise for the people:
"They're coming. They're coming. They're on the way." During his tour of the damaged areas, Illinois governor, James Thompson, tried to buoy the spirits of weary residents, alerting them that much coveted sandbags were on the way. Three northern and western counties near Chicago, hard hit by storms, have seen the burgeoning Foy and Desplaines Rivers spill into their streets, their garages and, ultimately, their homes.
Residents and authorities had been pinning their hopes on sandbagging. Public works trucks line up to load sand onto their flatbeds. The US Army Corps of Engineers with state officials today are distributing a quarter million of the bags to communities stricken or threatened by ever expanding flood waters. But for some residents, even the sandbags have failed.
"The water, from flowing this way, went through and by the pressure finally knocked the sandbags over. And, within a matter of a minute, every wall came down, and I was standing in water this deep."
State emergency officials say the state could suffer $ 30,000,000 in damages and what is one of Illinois' worst flooding disasters. Most residents have been trying to tough it out, but rescue worker, Dave Besh, says that's changing:
"I know there's people calling up now that refused evacuation yesterday, that are calling here now, getting hold of our trucks verbally because their phones are out, that want to be evacuated now and they're trying to get the boats to get them out of there."
The floods have driven more than 2,000 people from their homes. They have also forced road closures and businesses and schools to shut down. In Gurney, Illinois, the elementary school classrooms sit under 5 feet of water and Gurney Deputy Fire Chief, Tim McGrath, says there's little that can be done.
"We know we're going to displace. We know that we're going to sustain more loss. There's no way of confining the river, of course, there's no controlling the river."
Today, Governor Thompson declared a number of additional community state disaster areas, setting up the first step for Federal help. The rainy weather forecast is not of much comfort, and some weary workers and homeowners say the only thing left to do now is wait until the flooding passes and put everything back together again.
For National Public Radio, I'm Cheryl Coralie in Chicago.


Fast food restaurants have made some Americans rich. It's been more than 30 years since the first McDonald's opened, and this nation's eating habits have been transformed by fast food. Today, we spend over $50,000,000,000 a year on Whopper's Big Macs and the Colonel's Fried Chicken. The key is convenience. The ignored factor is nutrition. That's something Michael Jacobson cares about. He's written a Fast Food Guide to tell consumers what's under the bun. As far as hamburgers go, Jacobson says one chain's burger is as good nutritional as the next.
"Each chain has a variety of hamburgers: singles, doubles, triples; in some restaurants, cheeseburger, baconburger, mushroom burgers, and generally, when they start gussying up the hamburger with the toppings, you're going to get more fat, more salt, and less nutritious product."
"So you think you shouldn't be so concerned with which chain it is you're eating at as far as the burger, but rather whether you're getting the simple, naked burger, or the burger with all the fillings on it. That's where a lot of the fat comes in."
"For instance, at Wendy's, you can just get a regular little hamburger, which has about 4 teaspoons of fat, or you can get then triple cheeseburger with 15 teaspoons of fat, and that's a tremendous difference. I think the message for hamburgers and many other fast foods is to keep it simple, keep it small."
"Is the meat that's used in most of these chains fattier than what I'd buy if I went to the butcher and bought meat?"
"We actually had these meats analyzed, and we found they were pretty average. It was an ordinary grade hamburger meat for most of the chains. You can get much leaner meat at the grocery store, or if you get ground round. If you want red meat and you want to eat at a fast food restaurant, I recommend going for the roast beef. All roast beef was leaner than all hamburger meat in the tests we conducted."
"Now this does differ from chain to chain because, for instance, the Roy Roger's roast beef, you have listed as having 2% fat whereas Arby's roast beef, 13%."
"The differences in roast beef are really remarkable. Arby's and Hardy's have 7 times as much fat as Roy Roger's. Also, Roy Roger's had real roast beef, whereas Arby's has kind of a composite roast beef, where the beef is chipped and scrunched together with sodium phosphate and other chemicals."
"It is impossible now to watch TV without seeing commercials for chicken nuggets from one chain or another. What are chicken nuggets made out of?"
"Chicken McNuggets at McDonald's, probably the original chicken nuggets, are not whole pieces of chicken. Rather it's composite chicken made with ground-up chicken skin held together with sodium phosphate and salt. It's a relatively fatty product, about 5 teaspoons of fat for a small order of McNuggets. The competition at, say, Burger King, which makes chicken tenders, uses real chicken. And the fat content, partly because it doesn't have ground up chicken skin in it, is much lower, about 2 teaspoons for a small order of chicken tenders."
"Chicken is a food that is highly recommended by people who are very calorie conscious and are very fat conscious, because it's a food low in fat. But once you get the chicken and you deep fry it, as they do at all the fast food chains, is it still a nutritionally good food?"
"Well, chicken products tend to have less fat than beef products partly because the fat stays on the outside. If you're getting fried chicken, you ought to take off the skin, take off the breading. That's where most of the fat, most of the sodium are. So you can turn kind of a mediocre product into really quite a nutritious product."
"If the fast food industry came to you for advice about how they could nutritionally improve their menus, what would you tell them?"
"Fresh fruit, low-fat diary products, low-fat or skim milk, keep up those salad bars, baked fish, baked chicken, and that lean roast beef. It is possible to offer nutritious tasty foods at a fast food restaurant, and I hope that the chains are moving in the right direction with the proliferation of salad, salad bars, and the like."
In Washington, Michael Jacobson, Director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.