Transcripts

text | pdf |

---

SPEAKER 1: You can find breaking news and listen online at mprnewsq.org.

SPEAKER 2: Support for this program comes from Borton Volvos Factory-Direct Overseas Delivery Program. You can pick up your new Volvo in Scandinavia, tour Europe before you and your car return, includes hotel and two tickets to Gothenburg, Sweden. More at borton.com.

SPEAKER 1: Sunny skies, 38 degrees. Pretty nice day in the Twin Cities today. We can look for a sunny to partly sunny sky all afternoon, and it might warm up to about 55 today. Tonight, there's a slight chance for some rain.

Overnight low of 35 degrees. There's also a chance of rain tomorrow on Saturday, with a high of 50 degrees. Sunday looks like a little better day, should be dry, partly cloudy with a high temperature of 50 degrees. Keep your fingers crossed. Right now, it could hit 70 by the middle of next week. No 70s today, 50 to 55.

LAKSHMI SINGH: From NPR News in Washington, I'm Lakshmi Singh. The US and Russia have an agreement for each nation to scale back nuclear arsenals by a third. After months of deadlock today, President Obama announced a landmark deal to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expired in December.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Today, we've taken another step forward by-- in leaving behind the legacy of the 20th century while building a more secure future for our children. We turned words into action. We've made progress that is clear and concrete.

LAKSHMI SINGH: Presidents Obama and Dmitry Medvedev of Russia plan to sign the new pact on April 8. Tensions are climbing on the Korean Peninsula. NPR'S Anthony Kuhn is reporting on a possible Naval clash between North and South Korea.

ANTHONY KUHN: South Korea's Yonhap news agency is quoting Navy officials as saying a South Korean Navy ship with 104 crew members sank in the Yellow Sea after an explosion on the ship's stern. It says the 1,500-ton ship went down after 9:00 PM local time today and that a rescue operation was underway. The South's YTN TV says the government is investigating the possibility of a North Korean torpedo attack.

Yonhap also says that a South Korean Naval ship fired on an unidentified vessel to its north after the South Korean ship began sinking. It says government ministers in charge of security are meeting in Seoul to discuss the incident. Today's events occurred near the two Koreas disputed maritime border, where Naval clashes have flared in recent years. Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Seoul.

LAKSHMI SINGH: At least 20 people are dead, dozens more wounded from bomb blasts north of the Iraqi capital today. Authorities in Diyala Province say two bombs exploded at a restaurant. The attack comes as Iraqis are awaiting the final results of this month's parliamentary elections.

Israeli forces are locked in a battle with Palestinian militants in the Southern Gaza Strip. Palestinian security officials tell the Associated Press that there have been casualties. The latest violence comes as Israel presses ahead with settlement expansion in East Jerusalem over the Palestinians and the US's objections. And even after meeting President Obama this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unswayed. His office released a statement today defending its expansion.

A European agreement to help Greece with its growing debt crisis sent US stocks rising this morning. After about an hour, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose more than 50 points. And the NASDAQ gained about 14 today. We're still seeing some gains on US stocks. At last check, the Dow is up 8 points at 10,849.

However, the NASDAQ has lost about 6 points at 2,391. The debt troubles surrounding Greece and other European countries rattled world markets in recent months. From Washington, this is NPR News.

SPEAKER 3: Support for news comes from the Wallace Foundation, a source of ideas for expanding learning opportunities beyond the school day, at wallacefoundation.org.

PERRY FANELLI: From Minnesota Public Radio news, I'm Perry Fanelli. St. Paul Police have arrested a 27-year-old man in connection with yesterday's house fire that took the life of a two-year-old boy. Police arrested the man late last night on suspicion of arson and homicide. He has not been charged. St. Paul Police say investigators found possible evidence of an accelerant in the house and had been looking for a man the family knows and who had been in the home before the fire started.

Governor Tim Pawlenty is back in Minnesota after his second trip to New Hampshire since he announced he would not seek re-election. Pawlenty gave a speech to Republicans in Manchester last night about three months after addressing GOP activists in Concord. He talked about fiscal responsibility and said the nation's growing debt poses a national security threat. Among those listening to Pawlenty was Mark Warden of suburban Manchester. Warden says he left impressed.

MARK WARDEN: He has a good message. And as long as he continues to spread that message and talk to people about fiscal restraint, individual responsibility, personal liberty, then, yeah, I'd like to hear him continue.

PERRY FANELLI: Democrats say Pawlenty should be spending more time in Minnesota working with both parties to address the budget crisis. After last night's event, Pawlenty accused Democrats of looking for someone to blame for not doing their own work. St. Paul city officials said this morning the Mississippi River continues to recede.

The current reading in downtown St. Paul is just under 18 feet. The National Weather Service predicts the river level will be below feet by tomorrow morning and below 14 feet in about a week. City officials say they will reopen streets and parks when they determine they are safe for the public.

State forecast today-- partly cloudy skies, high temperatures, mid-40s in the north, low 50s in central and southern Minnesota. In the Twin Cities at last report, mostly sunny skies and 38 degrees. This is Minnesota Public Radio News.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

GARY EICHTEN: And good afternoon. Welcome back to midday on Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Gary Eichten. This week on Minnesota Public Radio News, we've been featuring a series of stories about obesity and how our relationship with food affects our weight and our health.

This hour, to wrap up our coverage, we're going to feature some highlights from fighting obesity one meal at a time. We'll report on the toll that obesity is taking on children. We'll report on what's in school lunches and efforts to make those lunches better for kids.

We'll also learn what's happening on Indian reservations, where obesity rates are higher than the national average. We'll look at whether Minnesotans have the knowledge they need to make healthy food choices, and we'll have some practical tips for eating well and controlling weight.

A bit of background before we get started-- actually, Minnesota has the lowest rate of overweight and obese children in the country. And yet, more than 23% of Minnesota children, nearly one out of four, are overweight. And a growing number of kids are now so fat they're considered extremely obese, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control. That puts them at substantially higher risk of developing devastating diseases or dying prematurely. To begin, reporter Lorna Benson looks at the toll that obesity is taking on children's health.

LORNA BENSON: Today, 19-year-old Daniel Soderberg is a trim 166 pounds.

[SKATEBOARD WHEELS GRINDING]

DANIEL SODERBERG: Whew!

LORNA BENSON: His body is limber and strong as he sails over a curb on his skateboard.

[SKATEBOARD THUDDING]

DANIEL SODERBERG: Cleared that whole thing. That's nice.

LORNA BENSON: Watching Daniel skate, it's hard to believe, when he was 12, he weighed 329 pounds. That's three times what someone his height and age should weigh. Daniel's parents, Brian Soderberg and Denise Engstrom, took a lot of heat for their son's weight. His doctors suggested that they weren't trying hard enough, but Daniel says they were.

DANIEL SODERBERG: They put me on a lot of diets. They really did. Like, every diet there was, I was on.

LORNA BENSON: At the dining room table of his Cambridge, Minnesota, home, Brian flips through old school photos, documenting Daniel's transformation from a chubby first grader to a dangerously overweight adolescent. He recalls feeling overwhelmed at the time.

BRIAN SODERBERG: That was six years old. That one's 8, and that one's 10. You can see how he was gaining weight, even though we were trying to maintain a diet. I mean, we couldn't keep the weight off.

LORNA BENSON: By the time he was 11, Daniel was suffering from back and neck pain. Then he developed severe headaches. His father thought he was faking his illness to get out of school.

BRIAN SODERBERG: One day, he actually-- I asked him for the remote control off the table, and he physically reached around the table like he couldn't see it. It was right there. It was the only thing on the table. And that's when it occurred to me that there might be something going on that he can't see.

LORNA BENSON: Daniel's huge weight gain put enormous pressure on his optic nerves, and that was making him blind. The condition he had is called pseudotumor cerebri. It's associated with obesity but usually doesn't occur until adulthood. Daniel's doctors cut slits in the nerves to relieve the pressure on his eyes, but it wasn't enough. They said he needed to lose weight quickly to save his sight.

They recommended a gastric bypass, a procedure in which doctors bypass the stomach and create a much smaller pouch to capture food. The procedure essentially forces the patient to eat dramatically less food. At the age of 12, Daniel became probably the youngest person in the world at the time to get a gastric bypass. His surgeon at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Sayeed Ikramuddin, didn't take the matter lightly.

SAYEED IKRAMUDDIN: Because we wondered, will you grow after something like this?

LORNA BENSON: Daniel's gastric bypass was a success. He lost more than 170 pounds, and he regained most of his eyesight. He also grew to a height of 5 feet 11 inches, taller than both of his parents. A year after his surgery, Brian and Denise had gastric bypasses. Denise lost 110 pounds, and Brian lost 165 pounds.

Today, gastric bypass surgery and another procedure called gastric banding are becoming more common among children. The University of Minnesota has done more than 100 in the past few years. Ikramuddin says he's treated kids that weigh twice as much as Daniel, but he says it was almost too late for those kids because they didn't lose enough weight to make a meaningful difference in their health.

That's because the weight-losing effects of gastric procedures only last from nine months to a year and a half. After that, it's very difficult to shed extra pounds. Ikramuddin says the growing prevalence of extremely obese kids is an urgent health crisis that demands that pediatricians, family doctors, and parents act more quickly.

SAYEED IKRAMUDDIN: Once someone who's between the ages of 12 to 17 crosses 250 pounds, they need to be seen by a surgeon, if anything, just to scare them as to what the alternative is. But if someone gets to 500 pounds and comes into my office, my hands are tied. And I think that's a tragedy. So we can't wait that long.

LORNA BENSON: Surgery is not a cure for the obesity epidemic. The solution is making sure kids never reach 250 pounds or more in the first place.

CHRISTINE MELKO: Hold the button down so it zeros it, and then close it up because it won't count if it's open like that.

LORNA BENSON: A group of 7 to 12-year-olds stands around dietician Christine Melko as she demonstrates the proper way to turn on a pedometer to count their steps. The children are here because they've been diagnosed as obese by Dr. Betsy Schwartz. Schwartz treats kids who are already showing signs of illness related to their excess weight. She organized this weight management pilot project at Park Nicollet Clinic in St. Louis Park, where she works.

BETSY SCHWARTZ: And we're seeing a huge number of type 2 diabetes, which we used to not see at all in children. We usually only see it in the prepubertal children or the older kids. But even in the younger kids, we're seeing signs of early abnormalities, such as insulin resistance, high insulin levels that put kids at risk for later developing diabetes.

LORNA BENSON: Diabetes isn't the only disease plaguing some of her young overweight patients. She treats kids with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and a condition called fatty liver disease. That's an accumulation of fat in the liver that can cause inflammation and scarring. In its severest form, it can cause liver failure.

All of these diseases are preventable, but these kids will have to completely change their lifestyles to fix the problems caused by their excess weight.

CHRISTINE MELKO: When we're looking at these salads, what we want to do is we want to really focus on the ones that don't have a lot of mayonnaise.

LORNA BENSON: On a recent Thursday night, Christine Melko took the class on a tour of the Byerlys grocery store across the street from the clinic. She started her mini-course in nutrition in the deli section.

CHRISTINE MELKO: And when it comes to serving sizes for these salads, we're looking at just about a 1/2 a cup to 2/3 of a cup. So it's not-- it's not a lot.

LORNA BENSON: Some of the parents in the group nodded and sighed as Melko continued delivering bad news about some of their favorite foods. Angie Larson of Bloomington felt a little overwhelmed.

ANGIE LARSON: Everything that they're saying is bad is what we have in the house. [CHUCKLES] The 2% milk, the white bread, all the treats and the snacks, nothing low fat.

LORNA BENSON: Larson's nine-year-old daughter, April, has high cholesterol. It hasn't reached the danger zone yet, but her parents know they need to do something about it now. April is motivated, too. She's keenly aware that she's overweight.

APRIL: Yeah, I wear fluffy shirts, so they're not skin tight. [CHUCKLES]

LORNA BENSON: Do you want to wear skin tight ones?

APRIL: Well, my sister-- she's really skinny, and she wears skin tight, so I kind of-- so.

LORNA BENSON: April's dad, Dave Larson, says he's not sure why his youngest daughter is struggling with weight more than the rest of the family. But as a part of his role in the program, he has given up his nightly ice cream indulgence for April's sake.

DAVE LARSON: When it comes right down to it, that's where you got to look in the mirror and say, she's not getting it herself. That's something that you're providing for her, and you need to address it.

LORNA BENSON: In just seven weeks on the program, Larson has lost 7 pounds. His daughter has lost 2 pounds, and her cholesterol is already lower. But he says, changing his lifestyle is hard work. And he knows it will be especially challenging over time when his family might not feel as motivated as they are now.

The health experts running this project know that's true, but they don't want anyone in the group getting hung up on negative thoughts. They believe success can be measured by lots of little improvements made one meal at a time. Lorna Benson, Minnesota Public Radio News.

GARY EICHTEN: This hour on midday, we're featuring highlights from Fighting Obesity One Meal at a Time, the series of reports that we've been featuring all week here on Minnesota Public Radio News. And as Lorna reported, obesity is definitely affecting children's health. Thus, Minnesota schools are being urged to improve the food that they serve in the lunchroom.

And school officials say they are answering the call, even if there's still a lot of work to be done. They say there's less fat and salt and more grains and fruits in school lunches, especially important effort for some low-income children who get most, if not all, of their meals at school. Tom Weber reports.

TOM WEBER: If you want to see the future of healthy school lunches, head out to the muddy fields of Gail Griffin's bison ranch near Winona.

GAIL GRIFFIN: It was a hard winter. It really was because it came and never-- we never had a January thaw. They handle it quite well. Yet, nutritionally, the grasses weren't readily available to them.

TOM WEBER: These bison are grass fed. And they all have names, even the ones that will soon end up as a burger on a school lunch tray.

GAIL GRIFFIN: That one is Lizzie. They have a diversity of names, Ontario, Ridge Runner. And they know their names. Over here we've got Squeaks.

TOM WEBER: One place these animals will end up is Winona High School, which is just a few miles away and one of the few but growing number of schools in Minnesota to serve bison.

EVAN DRAVES: It tastes great. I like it a lot. It's a little bit different but not very off, I guess.

TOM WEBER: Beef burgers and chicken patties are still staples of Winona's lunch menu, and you can still score cookies and other sweets. But Winona is gaining a reputation as a leader in the quest to redefine the school lunch in Minnesota, thanks, in part, to the bison from the neighboring ranch. Food service director Lyn Halverson says bison meat has less fat and cholesterol and more iron than traditional meats ounce for ounce. But Halverson has also helped add other items to the menu, like locally grown apples.

LYN HALVERSON: We're trying to increase fiber, reduce fats, eliminate trans fats, reduce sodium. We buy a lot of wholegrain products, and we do a lot of-- I call it sneaky cooking. The kids don't always know that our pizza crusts, even though it looks like a white crust, is a wholegrain crust.

TOM WEBER: The obesity epidemic has schools on the front line in the war against wider waists and the health problems that come with them. If current trends continue, one out of every three children born today will face a future with diabetes. A new study of more than 700,000 children in California found more than 7% of boys and 5% of girls fall into the category of most extreme obesity.

School officials, like Ann Hoxie, say one hope is that healthier food will also be tastier. She supervises health and wellness for St. Paul schools and remembers growing up a picky eater.

ANN HOXIE. You had to clean your plate, and you couldn't leave until you did. And if they caught you putting your stew in your half-finished milk, you had to eat it out of the carton. So I have some horrendous memories of being a kid.

TOM WEBER: But Hoxie proclaims a new day for school cafeterias.

SPEAKER 2: Can I get two?

SPEAKER 3: Just one, hun.

TOM WEBER: The lunch line at Battle Creek Elementary includes one entree for everyone, but students also have to walk past a salad bar and can take however much they want there. Don't be surprised to find things like jicama, squash, and steamed broccoli, alongside apples and carrots. What are you eating here today?

SPEAKER 4: Chicken patty.

TOM WEBER: What else you got?

SPEAKER 4: There's bread and apple, and there's my milk.

TOM WEBER: So what would you say is the healthiest thing on your plate right now?

SPEAKER 4: My apple.

TOM WEBER: There have also been changes in Minneapolis, where schools no longer sell cookies or even french fries. All the fryers came out last year. Minneapolis Food Service director Rosemary Diederichs still points to a number of challenges, though, like cutting sodium.

ROSEMARY DIEDERICHS: People like to call it airline food, which we don't like to hear, because we know we're better than that. But we're on the right path. Are we there yet? No, absolutely not.

TOM WEBER: Not being there yet has caused at least one family to abandon school lunches. Robin Pillmann is a junior at Central High in St. Paul. His mother no longer gives him or his brother money to buy lunch at school. But that's OK for Robin.

ROBIN PILLMANN: It's crap.

TOM WEBER: Pillman has a weight problem. In fact, he found out last year his heart wall is too thick and needs a diet change. He has since created a Facebook page titled "School Food Sucks" to vent, not just about nutrition concerns, but also the taste, like that rib sandwich they recently served.

ROBIN PILLMANN: It's pretty much ground beef in barbecue sauce stamped into a patty to make it look like there's ribbon, and I'm pretty sure it's just ground recycled tire. I find the school lunches so testable. It just makes me feel gross.

TOM WEBER: A menu that was posted on the St. Paul district website confirms that those rib sandwiches did have more calories and fat than anything else that day. But Joanne Berkenkamp isn't so sure that's entirely the district's fault. Berkenkamp works for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and tries to connect schools to more locally grown foods through a program called Farm To School.

She notes that current law only includes a calorie minimum for school lunches, not a calorie cap. So the rib sandwich is OK. But more importantly, Berkenkamp says schools are fighting an uphill battle against the fact that a lot of unhealthy food is cheap. And they have to feed a lot of kids.

JOANNE BERKENKAMP: We have agricultural policy in the United States that is really aimed at providing the lowest-cost possible food, which has its merits. But often, there's a real loss in quality that happens. And as school funding has been squeezed, often the schools have very few choices but to use some of those lower-cost items through no fault of their own.

TOM WEBER: That's why St. Paul's nutrition director Jean Ronnei celebrates small victories, like incorporating more brown rice into meals and serving salads that have some romaine and spinach instead of just all iceberg lettuce.

JEAN RONNEI: Schools have made incredible strides with what they're doing. And for every 10 good stories, unfortunately there's one that folks tend to remember, which is something bad.

TOM WEBER: The obesity fight is especially important for low-income students. A recent Minnesota Public Radio news analysis found that one in three students in Minnesota is now enrolled in free and reduced lunch programs. That means more children eat two to three meals a day in schools. And for some children, that's the only food they get.

Substantial change would also have to come from Washington because school lunches are highly regulated and subsidized by the federal government. The nation's law-regulating school lunches is up for renewal this year, and one proposal has already called for a $4.5 billion funding boost. But the push won't just be for more money. It will also be for more nutritional requirements on school food.

Food directors in Minnesota say they'll work to keep improving lunches even if some new law doesn't force them to. And as for menu changes, more metro students can soon expect what has become a norm in Winona. St. Paul plans to add bison burgers to its menu later this fall. Tom Weber, Minnesota Public Radio News.

GARY EICHTEN: Another in our series of reports, Fighting Obesity One Meal at a Time, this hour we're featuring some highlights from that series, which we've been broadcasting all week here on Minnesota Public Radio News. So far this hour, we've heard about children and obesity. Well, one local expert says that healthy eating habits, especially for teens, can come from sharing meals at home.

Dianne Neumark-Sztainer is an epidemiologist with the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. She's also the author of I'm, Like, SO Fat!-- Helping Your Teen Make Healthy Choices About Eating and Exercise in a Weight-Obsessed World. She spoke this week with Minnesota Public Radio's Stephen John.

STEVEN JOHN: Why are family meals so important?

DIANNE NEUMARK-SZTAINER: Our research findings are very, very strong. We have found that family meals, more frequent family meals are associated with better dietary outcomes. So for example, adolescents who eat more with their families have more fruits and vegetables, less soda pop, more wholegrains.

We have also found that adolescents who eat more frequently with their family are at lower risk for disordered eating behaviors, which place adolescents at risk for both obesity and for eating disorders. And then we have found that family meals are associated with non-dietary outcomes such as better success and school, better emotional well-being.

STEVEN JOHN: So what are you finding is more important? Is it just the communal experience, or is it the food? What is it? Or both?

DIANNE NEUMARK-SZTAINER: The food, the nutritional content obviously will have an impact on children's weight, their dietary intake, et cetera. But the meeting together, that opportunity to share time, to share thoughts is also equally or more important. Sometimes, I'll encourage families who aren't used to eating together-- just make it easy. Find a way to eat a meal that doesn't demand a lot of preparation. But you can come together and at least be talking to each other.

STEVEN JOHN: Can you just have takeout? Is it just like maybe just once in a while, say, hey, we're going to have pizza. We're going to sit at the kitchen table, and we're going to have a little family meal.

DIANNE NEUMARK-SZTAINER: Absolutely. I think that the thing that can scare families off is this vision from Leave It To Beaver, this perfect family where there's never an argument, where there's a three-course home-cooked meal. I mean, that's beautiful. But the reality is that is not what usually happens.

STEVEN JOHN: Let's talk about the communication aspect of a family meal and beyond with teenagers who, by their nature, are rebellious. What if a parent notices that their child is exhibiting some eating disorder issues or is overweight? And as a teenager who naturally doesn't want to discuss things with their parents, let alone something as private as their bodies, what can a parent do?

DIANNE NEUMARK-SZTAINER: One of the main pieces of advice that I give in my book is to talk less and do more. Talk less about weight. Do more to make your home environment a place where it's easier for children to make healthy eating and physical activity choices.

Too often, we do the opposite. We offer advice. We talk about our diet. We talk about how we don't like our body shape or size. And that would be my major piece of advice for families, is to stop talking about weight. And instead, see what you can do at home.

STEVEN JOHN: Is there a danger in this stage of the development of a teenager or an adolescent that you are seeing just more and more as the person who tells them what to do? You tell them what time to get up. You tell them what time to go to bed. And here you are sitting down, telling me, I have to eat at a certain time. I mean, it just seems like it's really difficult to try to get those healthy messages across in a way that doesn't sound like you're constantly telling them what to do.

DIANNE NEUMARK-SZTAINER: Telling teenagers what to do is probably always going to backfire. So we have to be a little more creative in how we do it. The advantage that we have is that teenagers are hungry. I mean they are. They are in a rapid, rapid state of growth and development.

And usually, they will want to eat if there is good food around. That would be their preference. So you have a big advantage there. I would talk to them, see what might work for them. Set up an expectation, and make it a gradual change.

Obviously, if you haven't been eating together, don't say, we're going to be here every day at 6:00. But figure out what might work. I also think it's a realistic expectation if your children are home that they come to the dinner table.

STEVEN JOHN: As folks prepare their dinner this evening, what's some just parting advice you have for them to make it a healthy one?

DIANNE NEUMARK-SZTAINER: Well, first of all, I would say, enjoy. Enjoy your children. Enjoy who's ever sitting there. And try to make one small change to make it a little healthier. Serve some baby carrots. Serve a salad. Have a good conversation.

STEVEN JOHN: All right. Thank you for this good conversation, doctor.

DIANNE NEUMARK-SZTAINER: You are welcome.

GARY EICHTEN: Dianne Neumark-Sztainer-- she is an epidemiologist with the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, specializing in eating disorders and obesity prevention and teenagers talking with the Minnesota Public Radio's Steven John. This hour on midday, we're featuring highlights from our series, Fighting Obesity One Meal at a Time. Series looks at our relationship with food and how our food affects our health. Series was produced in collaboration with the Minnesota Community Foundation.

After we take a break for news, we'll learn about food illiteracy, parents who don't know how to cook and kids who don't know what real food looks like. And we'll get some practical tips for fighting obesity. By the way, something new-- you can find out who's on midmorning and midday on your phone. Get a text weekday mornings with our talk show lineup. Just text the word "talk" to 677677. Standard texting rates apply.

PERRY FANELLI: And from Minnesota Public Radio News, I'm Perry Fanelli. Months of difficult negotiations have yielded a treaty between the US and Russia to sharply cut the nuclear arsenals of both countries. The pact will be signed next month in Prague. Both countries would have to cut the number of long-range nuclear weapons they have by about a third to about 1,500 each.

Iraqi police say a twin bombing at a restaurant in the city north of Baghdad has killed 40 people and wounded dozens more. The bombing come as Iraqis await the final results later today from the country's March 7 parliamentary election. The blasts were the worst violence to hit Iraq since the vote.

Military officials say a South Korean Navy ship has fully sunk in the waters off an island not far from North Korea. There are no reports of casualties among the crew of 104 on board. Officials and news reports say South Korea's military scrambled Navy vessels to the area after an explosion ripped a hole in the bottom of the ship.

Police say two children have survived the deadly crash on a Kentucky interstate involving a tractor trailer and a Mennonite Church van carrying a family to a wedding in Iowa. But 11 people, including the driver of the tractor trailer, were killed. Police say the truck crossed the median and struck that van head on.

The state forecast calling for partly cloudy skies today. High temperatures will range from the middle 40s in the north, low 50s and central and southern Minnesota. Right now in the Twin Cities, skies are mostly sunny. The temperature is 43 degrees. This is Minnesota Public Radio News.

GARY EICHTEN: And this is midday coming to you on Minnesota Public Radio News. Good afternoon. It's 12:30. I'm Gary Eichten. And this week on Minnesota Public Radio News, we've been featuring a series on obesity and talking about how the food we eat affects our health. And this hour on midday to wrap up our coverage, we've selected some highlights from that series.

Next up this hour, we ask the question, are we food illiterates? Some health experts believe many Americans don't have the knowledge or skills that they need to make healthy food choices. Lorna Benson reports on some Twin Cities efforts to increase food literacy.

LORNA BENSON: If you want to know why Americans and Minnesotans are struggling so much with weight and the problems that come with it, dietician Mary Story says, consider what kids today know about food.

MARY STORY: What we're seeing is that children have really lost a connection to food. A lot of food now is so heavily processed that many kids have never seen a cabbage.

LORNA BENSON: What really sticks with story is a personal experience involving dinner with some friends and their young son.

MARY STORY: I pulled a baked potato directly from the oven, put it on his plate. And he shrieked and said, what's that? And he was a nine-year-old and had never seen a baked potato. And I said, now do you know what French fries are? Which he did. But he had no idea what a potato was.

LORNA BENSON: That could be a sign that mom and dad don't cook much. They may even be food illiterate themselves. Story, whose co-director of the obesity Prevention Center at the University of Minnesota, says if kids never see a baked potato or they don't know what a cabbage is, they're far less likely to eat those foods or like them when they're offered to them.

CHRISTINE MELKO: I want you to just look around and tell us one fruit and one vegetable that you've never tried that you'd like to maybe give a shot trying. Dietician Christine Melko gives a group of 7 to 12-year-olds about 90 seconds to make their choices. The kids quickly fan out through the produce section of a Byerlys store in St. Louis Park. They're here because a doctor at Park Nicollet Clinic's weight management program has diagnosed them as obese. 10-year-old Katelyn Barthel from Andover points to a heap of red tomatoes. Her mother Sue seems surprised.

SUE BARTHEL: You want to try a tomato?

KATELYN BARTHEL: Or avocado. I don't know.

LORNA BENSON: Sue Barthel has tried getting her daughter to eat tomatoes in the past. She just couldn't convince Katelyn that she would like them.

SUE BARTHEL: She eats salsa. I keep telling her, you eat salsa. Why don't you eat tomatoes? She won't eat them singly. She thinks that they're different.

LORNA BENSON: But Katelyn is feeling brave now. Perhaps it's the excitement of participating in this challenge with other kids. Nearly everyone in the group found a fruit and a vegetable they're willing to try. Whatever the reason, Melco hopes this exercise will add a new healthy food option to their menus that wasn't there before. If the kids learn to even a few healthier foods while ditching some of the bad things they eat, they can profoundly affect their weight over time.

BEN SENAUER: A hundred calories a day over the entire year makes an enormous difference.

LORNA BENSON: Ben Senauer is an economist at the University of Minnesota's Food Industry Center. He says, on average, Americans eat at least a hundred calories more per day than people in Japan, who have a very low rate of obesity. Senauer thinks the calorie difference between the two countries can be explained partly by food prices. In Japan, food costs vacantly more than it does in the US.

BEN SENAUER: We actually have the cheapest food in the world, as measured by the share of the average household budget spend on food. It's less than 10% for food at home in the United States.

LORNA BENSON: Inexpensive food is not necessarily a bad thing. It makes it easier for people with very low incomes to feed their families. But Senauer says cheap food is often low in nutrients and high in calories, and that can take an enormous toll on a person's health over time. He finds it interesting that even with substantially higher food costs, the Japanese make very different food choices. On average, Japanese consumers spend 37% of their food budgets on fruit, vegetables, and fish. US consumers spend only 15% on these healthier foods.

SETH BIXBY DOHERTY: Well, everybody would come around here, please. Everybody gather around the table. Gather around.

[SIDE CONVERSATION]

So today, what we're going to do is we're going to make pizza. This is a really simple recipe.

LORNA BENSON: In a classroom next door to a Minneapolis Head Start program, Chef Seth Bixby Doherty holds up a pepper.

SETH BIXBY DOHERTY: When I'm cutting a pepper, it's easier to cut through it when you cut through the flesh side of it, rather than the shiny side.

[KNIFE SLICING]

LORNA BENSON: He shares simple tips that will make it easier and faster for these mothers to make home-cooked meals. Doherty knows that if a recipe takes too long, his students aren't likely to make it again.

SETH BIXBY DOHERTY: We're just going to let this cook for a little bit.

LORNA BENSON: Three years ago, Doherty gave up his job as Chef at Cosmo's Restaurant in Minneapolis to create Real-Food Initiatives. Now his customers are mainly schools. He helps them figure out ways to minimize the processed foods they serve and add more locally grown products to their menus. He also teaches cooking classes, like this one, to low-income families.

SETH BIXBY DOHERTY: What we're really teaching them to do is cook with real foods, what's healthy for them, what's healthy for their kids.

LORNA BENSON: Fardowsa Warsame came to the class because she has a daughter in the Head Start program next door.

FARDOWSA WARSAME: She kept telling me, mom come here and learn how to cook. Everybody's coming, so let's see it.

LORNA BENSON: Warsame arrived in the US from Somalia in the early '90s. She says her two children love American-style food, but she doesn't know how to make it.

FARDOWSA WARSAME: Never make a pizza. Usually, I order.

[LAUGHTER]

Easy to order, so not making.

LORNA BENSON: Those premade pizzas are probably filled with everything that's wrong with the average American diet, too much saturated fat, sugar, and salt. But Warsame has never really looked at the ingredients. While the healthy vegetable pizzas cook in the ovens, dietician Chris Deibele from the University of Minnesota Extension Service helps the students read a food label.

CHRIS DEIBELE: So when you're looking at your label, you want these numbers for total fat, saturated fat, salt, and sugar to be low, five or less.

LORNA BENSON: Still, food labels have been around for years, and there's not much evidence that they've had an effect on the nation's obesity epidemic. Nutritionists say better labels are needed. Some have even proposed adding a front of the pack symbol or rating system to foods that would make it easier to identify healthy food choices.

CHRIS DEIBELE: Doesn't it make you wonder what's wrong with our food supply when you have to search that hard to find what's healthy and that you even have to have a symbol on food to indicate that it's healthy? I mean, that's really a sign that things are not good.

LORNA BENSON: U of M dietician Mary Story thinks better labeling will help. But she says food companies also need to reformulate their products. Last fall, General Mills announced it would reduce sugar in its 10 sweetest cereals to 9 grams or less per serving. Story says 9 grams is still too much sugar per serving.

Recently, Pepsi said it will remove sweetened drinks from schools in more than 200 countries within two years. It's the first major soft drink producer to take that action. Story says those are positive steps. But if we don't take it even further, kids are going to pay for it with shorter lives.

MARY STORY: We're raising a generation of children that, unless things change, may be the first generation of children to lead sicker lives and die earlier than the previous generation.

LORNA BENSON: Despite the enormity of the challenge, the US may have reached a tipping point in the fight against obesity. Dieticians and others say the rising cost of health care, attributable in large part to obesity-related diseases, is forcing the nation to address the problem. Lorna Benson, Minnesota Public Radio News.

GARY EICHTEN: OK, so time now for some practical tools to fight obesity from All Things Considered medical analyst Jon Hallberg. Dr. Hallberg is a physician in Family Medicine at the University of Minnesota. He's also medical director at the Mill City Clinic in Minneapolis, and he spoke with Minnesota Public Radio's Steven John.

STEVEN JOHN: Of the patients that you have who've come into your office who are obese, is there a main reason why they let their weight get out of control?

JON HALLBERG: Oh, no. I mean, it's a gradual thing. And in many cases, I've seen patients for over a decade, maybe 15 years or even more than that sometimes. And the reasons for it are very subtle.

I mean, it's just, job has changed. They're more sedentary. We're getting older. People always hope that they're hypothyroid, that their thyroid is under-functioning. And that's almost never the case. It's wrapped in very intimately with who we are and what we do.

STEVEN JOHN: And what are the reasonable ways for someone to lose weight?

JON HALLBERG: People are tired of hearing this, but the fact is that you need to reduce your calories. You need to reduce the amount of fuel you're putting in the tank, and then you need to burn up the fuel you do have. You need to increase your activity.

It's as simple as that. And this is true, I should say, for the vast majority of people in this country who are overweight. It is not a deeply seated metabolic problem that is hard to solve. It's really quite simple.

So for example, a very simple way of thinking about this is that if a pound of human fat contains about 2,800 kilocalories of energy, that divides very nicely by seven, seven days in the week. So you're down to 400. So if you think about 400 calories a day, if you could eliminate that from your current diet, theoretically you could lose about a pound a week.

It doesn't sound like a whole lot. But in a month, that's 4 pounds. In three months, it's 12 pounds. It's 24 pounds in half a year, and it's 48 pounds in a full year. That's a lot of weight loss if someone needs to lose that. It's a very reasonable way to go about that. And if you add exercise on top of that, you could lose even more.

So though that's an estimation, it doesn't work for everybody. It's a very easy, concrete way to think about some weight loss. And what's 400 calories? Well, it's a bottle of soda and a large cookie. And how many people do that in the course of a day in terms of a snack or with a lunch? You just don't need that stuff. And if you can eliminate that, then it becomes fairly easy, frankly.

STEVEN JOHN: But are people willing to listen to that? I mean, why are the fad diets so popular? Why are there so many books about, lose weight now? I mean, we really do need to change the message, don't we? that you don't have to get it all done instantly, right?

JON HALLBERG: That's right. Well, you can't get it done instantly. And it just never works. The people who come into my clinic who are successful, it has become an absolute way of life, number one. But the great news is it's a simple change in life.

I mean, I can think of one person, for example, a middle-aged guy, basically my age, who is probably about 30 pounds heavier than he should have been. He came in one day, and I was astonished by how much better he looked. His hypertension, his high blood pressure was back to normal.

He looked great. He felt great. And I asked him, well, what did you do to make this happen? And it was astonishingly simple. He makes a lunch now that he brings from home to take with him to work, rather than eating at the cafeteria when he was eating hamburgers and fried chicken. And he walks. I mean, that's it.

I mean, he just-- he would take some time over lunch to walk. He would take the stairs when he could, a couple of flights, not a big deal, but just that increased expenditure from his otherwise desk job and sitting in cars and driving a fair amount, and then just reducing his calories.

And he wasn't even really keeping track of the calories. He was just eating fresh food that was prepared at home and not the stuff that was prepared at the cafeteria. And it was simple as that. And I think this is a story I hear again and again.

STEVEN JOHN: What words of encouragement do you have for the folks who are listening to this conversation and are saying, you know what, I've done everything that they're talking about. And I'm still the same size I was a few years ago.

JON HALLBERG: If people are saying that, that they really have tried this, I mean, sometimes, things haven't been tried to the extent that they really could. I mean, it isn't something you make a New Year's resolution about and then hope you do it in the month of January. It truly has to be incorporated into your life, the way we eat, what we eat, how we eat, how we commute, how we get to work, what we do with our bodies and our lives.

I mean, it's really complicated stuff. So it just we have to make that decision to incorporate that into our lives, and that's why it's so difficult. If people truly are morbidly obese and they've tried everything, yes, there are clinics to go to. There are possible surgical procedures to be done. But that's the true minority of people listening to this story.

STEVEN JOHN: All right, Jon, thanks so much.

JON HALLBERG: Thank you, Steven.

GARY EICHTEN: Dr. Jon Hallberg talking with Minnesota Public Radio's Steven John. Jon Hallberg is a physician in Family Medicine at the University of Minnesota. He's the medical director at the Mill City Clinic in Minneapolis, and he is our regular medical analyst on All Things Considered.

This hour of midday, we're featuring highlights from our week-long series "Fighting Obesity One Meal at a Time." And we're going to wrap up with a report from northern Minnesota. Latest data from the Centers for Disease Control shows that 68% of adults in the United States are either overweight or obese. But the obesity rate is actually higher on Indian reservations.

And what's more, Native American adults are nearly three times more likely than whites to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, a disease closely linked to obesity. Reporter Tom Robertson reports that in northern Minnesota, the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe is making some progress in dealing with this problem.

TOM ROBERTSON: Five Ojibwe women gather in a small conference room at the Indian hospital in Cass Lake. It's a support group for weight loss and healthy eating. The women are learning how to keep track of their fat intake.

RUBY LOWRY: One tablespoon of fat, even if it's a good fat, is 120 calories.

IRIS SHERER: Oh, my gosh. [CHUCKLES]

TOM ROBERTSON: Most of these women are in their 50s and 60s. All have been battling weight problems for years. All have type 2 diabetes except one, who's been told she's prediabetic. Iris Sherer was diagnosed with diabetes about five years ago. For a few years, she didn't do anything to take care of herself.

Now she works at eating the sorts of healthy foods that keep her disease under control. Scheer says as a child, she was never taught how to eat healthy. Family gatherings always meant overeating, and the food was never very healthy. Scheer says she was taught to eat whatever was put in front of her.

IRIS SCHEER: I'm from the old way, and the old way is you respect people when they offer you something like that. Then you go ahead and eat it, especially if it's an elder. You don't refuse that.

TOM ROBERTSON: Shearer says now, she tries to take what she learns from the support group and share it with family members. She says most of them are overweight and diabetic too.

IRIS SCHEER: I mean, everyone in my family-- me, my sisters, my one brother, we all have diabetes. And then I try to educate my children. I'm trying to break the cycle.

TOM ROBERTSON: Obesity and diabetes used to be considered adult problems, but it's affecting more and more young people. It's part of a national trend. In the past 30 years, childhood obesity rates in the US tripled. Nearly a third of children are overweight or obese. The rate is even higher among Native American kids approaching 50%. Dietician Roxanne Robinson is coordinator of the Carslake Hospital diabetes Center. Robinson sees the problem firsthand.

ROXANNE ROBISON: I've had, let's see, seven, eight, nine-year-olds with obesity who need an intervention, and then I've had 12, 13-year-olds with type 2 diabetes already. That's the biggest part. It's like, OK, yeah, diabetes can be controlled, but nobody really knows if you're going to start out at 13 with diabetes, what your path is going to be like.

TOM ROBERTSON: Type 2 diabetes means the body doesn't produce enough insulin. Without insulin, blood sugars get too high. Diabetes can be controlled with insulin injections, exercise, and a healthy diet. But if left unchecked, the condition can lead to kidney problems, amputations, and blindness. There's no single reason why Native Americans have the highest rates of diabetes in the country. Studies suggest Indians are genetically predisposed to the disease. But diabetes was rare in Native Americans at the turn of the 20th century.

When Indians were pushed onto reservations, they were pressured to give up their hunting and gathering traditions. That meant a dramatic shift in diet from wild game and forest greens to unhealthy foods heavy in fat, salt, and carbohydrates. Indian health experts say that while the news is bad, there are signs of improvement Doctor Steve Rith-Najarian is a diabetes expert with the federal Indian Health Service in Bemidji. Rith-Najarian says people in Indian communities are becoming better educated about diabetes and are taking better care of themselves.

DR. STEVE RITH-NAJARIAN: There is a success story about the degree to which the communities and individuals have taken ownership of diabetes. 25 years ago, it was rare for people to be doing self blood glucose monitoring. Now it's very commonplace

TOM ROBERTSON: Rith-Najarian says diabetes rates among Native Americans appear to be stabilizing, the rates of kidney complications and the need for dialysis are on the decline, and limb amputations that were once commonplace in Indian communities have declined on some reservations by as much as 80% according to Indian Health Service. Some of the credit for those improvements goes to people like Jody Devault.

JODY DEVAULT: I check my blood sugars up to eight times a day.

TOM ROBERTSON: Devault is a diabetic and a health educator at the Leech Lake Tribal Diabetes Clinic. Duvalt pricks her finger to draw a tiny drop of blood. She uses a small electronic device to check her body's sugar level.

JODY DEVAULT: 108, that's a good blood sugar.

TOM ROBERTSON: Jody Devault is a Leech Lake Band member. She's 42 years old. She developed diabetes when she was only 20. She went several years without treatment and gained a lot of weight. Then her eyesight started failing, and she began to lose sensation in her feet. Devault says her problems were largely connected to her diet.

JODY DEVAULT: All I was eating was banquet pot pies, cocoa puffs, white bread, white rice, elbow macaroni, pizzas, potato chips. I thought I was eating healthy, but I wasn't I was killing myself with the food that I was eating. I was literally killing myself.

TOM ROBERTSON: Devault began exercising and eating more fresh fruits and vegetables. She dropped 150 pounds and was able to reverse many of her health problems. Now Devault promotes a healthy lifestyle everywhere in the reservation. She advocates for more home gardens. She's pushing for healthier school lunches.

She coordinates diabetes summer camps for kids and diabetes education in the schools, and she encourages kids to take the message home to their parents. Jody Devault says lifestyle change isn't easy. She often hears excuses from parents who say healthy foods are either not accessible or are too expensive. Devault says those are obstacles that can be overcome through better planning and more health conscious shopping.

JODY DEVAULT: If you remove the pop that they stick in there, and if you remove that sugared cereal that they're buying $5 or $6 a box, if you remove those potato chips, and you remove those pizzas, you can buy that healthier food get rid of the little debbies and throw in some fruit and vegetables.

TOM ROBERTSON: There are other efforts to teach people about healthy eating. The latest comes from the Bemidji-based Indigenous Environmental Network. The organization got a quarter million dollar grant for a multi-pronged approach to diabetes prevention. One of them involves this classroom at the Negaunee Ojibwe language immersion school on the Leech Lake Reservation. These kids and their teachers speak only Ojibwe in the classroom. Teacher Adrian Liberty is asking the elementary-age-- students if they know that edible plants like wild ginger grow right in their backyards.

ADRIAN LIBERTY: [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

ALL: [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

TOM ROBERTSON: Liberty explains to the kids that their ancestors used to eat plants from the woods all the time, things like dandelion, cattail, Cedar, plantain, and hog peanut. The goal is to show them how to identify and prepare these edible greens and promote other traditional Ojibwe foods like deer, rabbit, fish, and berries. He says these are the foods that sustained Ojibwe people for thousands of years, a lot of that was lost over the past 150 years when the federal government started giving Indian tribes commodity foods like white flour and lard. Adrian liberty. Says Indians back then began frying bread out of those unhealthy ingredients and the tradition is still around today.

ADRIAN LIBERTY: Some of the things that we have start to own as Anishinaabe culture are so bad for us. Frybread, I mean, my god, is there a worst kind of food that we can eat? It's just filled with everything that's killing us. But somehow, we've embraced this that this is part of our culture.

TOM ROBERTSON: The grant-funded effort by the Indigenous Environmental Network also involves developing a local food network in the region that includes the Leech Lake, Red Lake, and White Earth reservations. The idea is to connect tribal members with those local growers and producers. No one believes any of these efforts will solve the problems of obesity and diabetes overnight. The hope is that collectively, they'll have a long term impact on the health of Native Americans. Tom Robertson, Minnesota Public Radio news on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation.

GARY EICHTEN: Our series, Fighting Obesity One Meal at a Time, was a collaboration with the Minnesota Community Foundation, and you can find all the stories from our series at mprnewsq.org. There's also a video, by the way, from the Leech Lake Reservation where locally grown and wild foods have become part of a weekly drum and dance night. And while you're at mprnewsq.org, take a food quiz to see how well you understand the food you're eating.

Well, that does it-- just about does it for midday to day. But before we go, today, we're going to take a look back at one of the biggest stories of the 20th century here in the state of Minnesota. Not just one of the biggest sports stories mind you, but one of the biggest stories. Period. 50 years ago today, the 1960 Edgerton Boys High School basketball team became the smallest school in state history to win Minnesota's state high school basketball tournament.

Now, back in 1960, there was only one class of schools in the tournament. The big schools and the small schools all competed against each other. And back in 1960, everybody followed the high school basketball tournament-- young and old, men and women, sports fans, sports haters. It was a very big deal in Minnesota.

So you can imagine what a big deal it was when a team from a Southwest Minnesota town with only 961 people marched all the way to the state championship beating one big school after another along the way. Everybody followed the story. It was Minnesota's version of Hoosiers come to life. Tomorrow night at this year's state tournament at Target Center, they're going to mark the 50th anniversary of Edgerton's championship season. Mark Style has a report.

MARK STYLE: Much of the old high school in Edgerton has been torn down, but there's still an important physical reminder of the team's 1960 title run. It's the tiny gym where the Edgerton players practiced and started their winning streak.

LARY SCHOOLMEESTER: You see how big it was? [LAUGHS] Kind of small, isn't it?

MARK STYLE: Larry Schoolmeester was a member of the 1960 team. Standing in the old gym, he says it still looks pretty much like it did 50 years ago. The same hardwood benches lined one side of the court. A stage still flanks the other side of the floor, although it's used now for weightlifting. On three sides, the gym's walls still crowd the court a foot or two from the out of bounds lines. The only sound in the gym now is that of Schoolmeester trying a few shots for fun on the floor where Edgerton made history. But he says 50 years ago, this gym in this town were exploding with excitement.

[CHEERING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

This is a recording of the Edgerton band playing at a rally for the basketball team in 1960. Those rallies got bigger as the team kept winning. Dean Veenhof was Edgerton's leading scorer. He says the players paid little attention to their success.

DEAN VEENHOF: We were just glad to be playing. We had a coach who knew what he was doing, and I know we never thought about district or sectional or state championships. We just played game from game to game to game.

MARK STYLE: And game after game, they won. Edgerton ended the regular season undefeated. As the playoffs for the state tournament began, Minnesota basketball fans started taking notice. Edgerton beat their first big city team, Mankato, and the buzz grew louder. People started calling them Giant Killers. In the first round of the state tournament, Edgerton sailed past another small town, Chisholm, from the Iron Range. The team's next game though launched the Edgerton legend into orbit.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Edgerton's second state tournament game against Richfield was a classic small town big city match-up, the little town on the prairie versus the muscular metro suburb.

BILL DAVIS: Going into the state tournament, Richfield was rated number one in the state.

MARK STYLE: Bill Davis was a star player on the 1960 Richfield basketball team. He says the squad had great athletes. All five starters went on to play varsity sports at the University of Minnesota. Davis eventually captained the Gophers basketball team and later signed a professional baseball contract with the Cleveland Indians. Davis says although sportswriters made Richfield a heavy favorite against Edgerton, the 19,000 basketball fans that night at Williams Arena had other ideas. He remembers the greeting Richfield got when they walked onto the court.

BILL DAVIS: The Boos started to come, and it became very apparent there that Edgerton was the crowd favorite, and that we had our work cut out for us.

MARK STYLE: And they did. The nip and tuck game was tied at the end of regulation play. In overtime, Edgerton could only score on free throws but took a thin lead anyway. In this recording courtesy of WCCO radio, Richfield has the ball as the final moments tick away.

ANNOUNCER(ON RADIO): 6 seconds to go, 63-60, the score. They've got to get a 3 point play. Over to Dennis Johnson, moves forward, shoots a one-hander, not good. Tip and a tap. It's over.

MARK STYLE: Edgerton's sharpshooting from the foul line won the game. They made over 80% of their free throws against Richfield. After the game, Edgerton Coach Rich Olson told WCCO radio the team's great shooting was no fluke.

RICH OLSON(ON RADIO): They shoot baskets from morning till night most of the year. They're in the gym on Saturdays. They stay after practice. We do shoot quite a few free throws. Every time I take a break when they're tired in practice, they don't rest. They shoot free throws.

MARK STYLE: The following night, Edgerton played Austin for the state championship. Coach Ove Berven led Austin through a great season that year and into the title game, but that final contest was almost anticlimactic compared to the dramatic Richfield game. Edgerton led by 12 at halftime and cruised to the title. Two days after the victory, Edgerton threw a welcome home celebration for the champs. A student entertained the thousands attending with a poem titled "Epitaph for Austin."

STUDENT(ON RADIO): Ove Berven's famous Austin team, came out on the floor,

With lots of steam. The boiler soon cooled, the fire went

Out. Of Edgerton's championship, there was no doubt.

DEAN VEENHOF: Many in the crowd were from neighboring communities. Nearby high school sent their bands. It didn't matter that Edgerton had defeated the schools during the basketball season. These former rivals helped build the Edgerton legend by adopting the team as their own. That enthusiasm swept through towns all across the state. Edgerton's long shot underdog win meant a lot to the team's newest fans. If Edgerton could pull off the impossible, maybe they could too. Mark Style, Minnesota Public Radio news, Edgerton.

GARY EICHTEN: Still a great story 50 years later. And again, they'll be honoring the Edgerton 1960 basketball champs this weekend at the state high school basketball tournament. Well, that does it for our mid-day program today. Gary Eichten here. Thanks so much for tuning in. Hope you can stay tuned. Talk of the Nation will be coming up next.

Sarah Meyer is the producer of our program. Julie Siple is our assistant producer. Technical director Randy Johnson with help from Clifford Bentley. And we also want to thank Rick Kozinski for helping out this week. Have yourself a great weekend and join us for midday on Monday 11:00 to 1:00 here on Minnesota Public Radio News.

MODERATOR: Support for this program comes from Marvin Windows and Doors and BINARI, the National Association of the Remodeling Industry. You can find a local accredited remodeling professional for your upcoming project online at narimn.org.

JOHN MOE: Hi. This is John Moe. Join me for Wits at the Fitzgerald Theater March 27th. We're going to be talking with Julia Sweeney, the former Saturday Night Live star and writer who left Hollywood to be a stay at home mom in the Midwest. Our topic, how to sacrifice everything for your ungrateful children.

SPEAKER: That's a topic I can totally relate to.

JOHN MOE: Dad and musician John Munson will be with us as well.

SPEAKER: Yeah. And I'm going to be playing some songs with Mason Jennings. It's going to be awesome.

JOHN MOE: Call the Fitzgerald Theater box office for tickets.