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KISSIMMEE, Fla. - Angela Swift found it surprising that daughter Alexandria would ask to stock the family fridge with healthy whole-wheat tortillas, fruit and turkey burgers.

Even more astonishing to Swift was that her third-grader largely developed a taste for such food at her public-school cafeteria.

"It's amazing," Swift said of Alexandria's transformation. "We used to pack lunches until we moved to this school ... but we like the variety and the low-fat opportunities. I couldn't possibly make for her all they offer here."

Alexandria's food choices, inspired by the cafeteria offerings at her Florida elementary school, are just what district officials hoped for when they let the originator of the South Beach Diet take over menu planning at four schools two years ago.

The National Audit Office report, entitled Recruitment and Retention in the Armed Forces, says there is a shortfall of 5,170 trained armed forces personnel (2.8 per cent) against the MoD's estimated requirements.

In fact, MoD figures show that the strength of the armed forces has consistently run below estimated requirements for at least the last decade. The situation at present is exacerbated by significant British Army commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan and Bosnia.

The report identifies particular "pinch points" within the armed forces where there are insufficient trained personnel. These include doctors, nurses, engineers and bomb disposal experts.

What does it say about young recruits?
In what is a sociologically interesting footnote, the report notes that "increasing levels of obesity and resultant health problems among young people reduces the number of young people able to join the services".

During the recent photo shoot for The Star's annual Thanksgiving Food/House and Home coverage (both sections come out the Sunday before Thanksgiving), Food editor Jill Silva and I discovered that trying to re-create past traditions is much easier with modern tools such as the Internet, cell phones, global positioning satellite and fire extinguishers.

Our theme this year is "100-mile Thanksgiving." Inspired by proponents of the so-called "100-mile diet," we wanted to create a menu featuring traditional foods grown and raised in our area. (One hundred miles was an aspiration, not a literal requirement. The final menu includes goat cheese from 120 miles away and sorghum from 215 miles away.)

The first challenge was figuring out, in effect, how far is near? We used Mapquest.com over and over to check distances to towns listed on labels of regionally produced preserves, ciders and cheeses.