I love this time of the year. The weather is mild and the Farmers’ Market is teeming with life. I’m not talking about the big crowds with families enjoying their morning shopping at the market, or the joy of watching young children tasting fruits and learning about real food. I’m referring to the incredible varieties of produce and rare seasonal treats that appear at farmer’s markets and which you will never see at the supermarket. What really caught my eye today were the beautiful freshly cut, right off the tree, green almonds.

The almond is native to, and was first domesticated in, the Mediterranean Middle East — present day Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Jordan and nearby countries. However, almond trees spread throughout the region, and have been a major food in Greece for thousands of years. In ancient Greece, almonds were eaten in a wide variety of states, from dried and roasted, as we eat them, or green and right off the tree. Green almonds are still eaten in Greece. The Greek word for green almond is tsagala.

The fuzzy green shell is still very soft and can easily be cut with a paring knife all around like an avocado. Inside you’ll find the kernel, which is surrounded by a thin skin, the one that becomes brown once matured. The inner kernel is translucent and soft to the bite. It tastes like it has tannins (slightly astringent), which makes sense as it’s still young and green. It’s hard to describe the flavor, but think of an un-sweet cross between grape and cucumber.

The farmer I bought these from told me that green almonds can be eaten whole with fuzzy shell and all or shelled — just the tender kernels by themselves. They can be steamed or sautéed with olive oil, garlic and herbs to enjoy them by themselves or put into salads or throw them into soups.

Almond season starts late April and lasts through mid June. – Amira

I love this time of the year. The weather is mild and the Farmers’ Market is teeming with life. I’m not talking about the big crowds with families enjoying their morning shopping at the market, or the joy of watching young children tasting fruits and learning about real food. I’m referring to the incredible varieties of produce and rare seasonal treats that appear at farmer’s markets and which you will never see at the supermarket. What really caught my eye today were the beautiful freshly cut, right off the tree, green almonds.

The almond is native to, and was first domesticated in, the Mediterranean Middle East — present day Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Jordan and nearby countries. However, almond trees spread throughout the region, and have been a major food in Greece for thousands of years. In ancient Greece, almonds were eaten in a wide variety of states, from dried and roasted, as we eat them, or green and right off the tree. Green almonds are still eaten in Greece. The Greek word for green almond is tsagala.

The fuzzy green shell is still very soft and can easily be cut with a paring knife all around like an avocado. Inside you’ll find the kernel, which is surrounded by a thin skin, the one that becomes brown once matured. The inner kernel is translucent and soft to the bite. It tastes like it has tannins (slightly astringent), which makes sense as it’s still young and green. It’s hard to describe the flavor, but think of an un-sweet cross between grape and cucumber.

The farmer I bought these from told me that green almonds can be eaten whole with fuzzy shell and all or shelled — just the tender kernels by themselves. They can be steamed or sautéed with olive oil, garlic and herbs to enjoy them by themselves or put into salads or throw them into soups.

Almond season starts late April and lasts through mid June. – Amira

Organic extra-virgin olive oil is the only oil on the Spartan Diet. But there’s a problem. A recent study by the University of California at Davis Olive Oil Center, in collaboration with the Australian Oils Research Laboratory, found that many products labeled as “extra virgin olive oil” in fact are not.

Unlike in Europe, where the “extra-virgin” designation is defined by law, there is no enforcement of standards in the United States.

Researchers found that 69 percent of imported oil labeled as “extra-virgin” in fact was not, whereas 10 percent of oils produced in California and sold as “extra virgin” were not. However, nearly all (99%) of oil labeled as extra-virgin olive oil in the United States is imported, so many American olive-oil eaters have never even tried US-made olive oil.

Researchers found that a wide variety of events can disqualify olive oil from the extra-virgin designation. Inferior-quality olives, oxidation of the oil, improper storage or the addition of lower-quality oil all can ruin olive oil and make it not truly extra virgin at the time of purchase.

In other words, many olive oils sold as extra virgin in fact did qualify at the time the oil was pressed, but has been degraded by some event later in the storage, transportation or bottling process. Oil can be oxidized, for example, by sunlight, heat or oxygen. The oxidation process raises the acidity level to above the “extra-virgin” limit, no matter what the label says.

This may explain why California olive oils tested so much better than imported oils: UC Davis is in California, so the California oil was all local, less handled and probably fresher.

Even olive oil that’s high-quality extra-virgin stuff when you buy it can degrade in your kitchen. Improper storage (with sunlight or heat) can damage the oil, of course. But even in ideal conditions, the quality of olive oil naturally degrades over time. One study found that after 6 months, olive oil loses about 40% of its antioxidants.

You can also ruin olive oil at the last minute by cooking it at too high a temperature.

So what’s an olive-oil obsessed Spartan Dieter to do? First of all, we need to think of extra virgin olive oil as something different than the indestructible cooking oils we grew up with. Because it’s unheated and unprocessed, olive oil is really almost a fruit juice.

You want to make sure your extra-virgin olive oil comes from a reputable producer, has been properly stored and handled between the producer and the store, and has been pressed as recently as possible.

Some farmer’s markets offer locally produced extra virgin olive oil. Because you’re buying it directly from the producer, it’s less likely to have been damaged during shipping and so on. This is not always the case, however. Grill the seller until you’re satisfied he or she is doing it right and selling the real deal.

Look for domestic olive oil, wherever you live. The less transportation the oil undergoes, the fewer the opportunities for spoilage.

Buy only organic. In our experience, organic producers tend to be more honest and more careful with oil quality. Besides, who wants pesticides in their salad?

Look for acidity level. Some olive oils proudly boast of their low acidity levels. This is a good sign. The lower, the better.

Ultimately, however, there is no substitute for becoming an olive-oil snob and knowing the difference based on how oil looks, smells and tastes. Because even good oil can go bad in your kitchen.

Look for olive oil tasking opportunities, and cultivate your ability to tell good oil from bad, virgin from non-virgin and extra from not-so-extra.

Extra-virgin olive oil in small quantities is the foundation of the Spartan Diet. But if you want truly extra-virgin olive oil, you can’t just passively accept what labels are telling you. You’ve got to fight for high-quality olive oil — but it’s worth the battle.

Organic extra-virgin olive oil is the only oil on the Spartan Diet. But there’s a problem. A recent study by the University of California at Davis Olive Oil Center, in collaboration with the Australian Oils Research Laboratory, found that many products labeled as “extra virgin olive oil” in fact are not.

Unlike in Europe, where the “extra-virgin” designation is defined by law, there is no enforcement of standards in the United States.

Researchers found that 69 percent of imported oil labeled as “extra-virgin” in fact was not, whereas 10 percent of oils produced in California and sold as “extra virgin” were not. However, nearly all (99%) of oil labeled as extra-virgin olive oil in the United States is imported, so many American olive-oil eaters have never even tried US-made olive oil.

Researchers found that a wide variety of events can disqualify olive oil from the extra-virgin designation. Inferior-quality olives, oxidation of the oil, improper storage or the addition of lower-quality oil all can ruin olive oil and make it not truly extra virgin at the time of purchase.

In other words, many olive oils sold as extra virgin in fact did qualify at the time the oil was pressed, but has been degraded by some event later in the storage, transportation or bottling process. Oil can be oxidized, for example, by sunlight, heat or oxygen. The oxidation process raises the acidity level to above the “extra-virgin” limit, no matter what the label says.

This may explain why California olive oils tested so much better than imported oils: UC Davis is in California, so the California oil was all local, less handled and probably fresher.

Even olive oil that’s high-quality extra-virgin stuff when you buy it can degrade in your kitchen. Improper storage (with sunlight or heat) can damage the oil, of course. But even in ideal conditions, the quality of olive oil naturally degrades over time. One study found that after 6 months, olive oil loses about 40% of its antioxidants.

You can also ruin olive oil at the last minute by cooking it at too high a temperature.

So what’s an olive-oil obsessed Spartan Dieter to do? First of all, we need to think of extra virgin olive oil as something different than the indestructible cooking oils we grew up with. Because it’s unheated and unprocessed, olive oil is really almost a fruit juice.

You want to make sure your extra-virgin olive oil comes from a reputable producer, has been properly stored and handled between the producer and the store, and has been pressed as recently as possible.

Some farmer’s markets offer locally produced extra virgin olive oil. Because you’re buying it directly from the producer, it’s less likely to have been damaged during shipping and so on. This is not always the case, however. Grill the seller until you’re satisfied he or she is doing it right and selling the real deal.

Look for domestic olive oil, wherever you live. The less transportation the oil undergoes, the fewer the opportunities for spoilage.

Buy only organic. In our experience, organic producers tend to be more honest and more careful with oil quality. Besides, who wants pesticides in their salad?

Look for acidity level. Some olive oils proudly boast of their low acidity levels. This is a good sign. The lower, the better.

Ultimately, however, there is no substitute for becoming an olive-oil snob and knowing the difference based on how oil looks, smells and tastes. Because even good oil can go bad in your kitchen.

Look for olive oil tasking opportunities, and cultivate your ability to tell good oil from bad, virgin from non-virgin and extra from not-so-extra.

Extra-virgin olive oil in small quantities is the foundation of the Spartan Diet. But if you want truly extra-virgin olive oil, you can’t just passively accept what labels are telling you. You’ve got to fight for high-quality olive oil — but it’s worth the battle.

The volunteers in the study who ate five tablespoons of tomato paste every day were on average 33 percent more protected against sunburn than the control group. Researchers calculated that this quantity of tomatos is the equivalent of constantly wearing a 1.3 SPF sunblock.

The scientists attribute this effect to an antioxidant present in tomatoes called lycopene, which is also responsible for giving tomatoes their red color. It’s also found in red carrots, watermelons and papayas.

Lycopene has also been linked in the past with protection against age-related events like macular degeneration, the formation of skin wrinkles, prostate cancer and the rise in bad cholesterol.

The research suggests that we should re-think our understanding of sun damage and skin cancer as not just about exposure, but also diet.

In the past few decades, we have seen dramatic rises in both Vitamin D deficiency and skin cancer, one thought to be caused by not enough sun, and the other by too much sun.

Of course, individual cases vary — and statistical changes can be partly determined by the immigration of people to climates incompatible with their skin types — but in general the rise in skin cancer may be closely linked to the degradation of diet.

In the past ten years, an enormous number of discoveries have been made about the link between diet and skin cancer. Broccoli, green tea, grapes, pomegranates, onions, red kidney beans, blueberries, cranberries, blackberries, rasperries, strawberries, apples, pecans, cherries, plums and black beans, tumeric (every single one of them a Spartan Diet superfood) have all been found to contain compounds that “fight” skin cancer.

Even extra-virgin olive oil applied to the skin after sun expsure — a practice the Spartans started in Ancient Greece more than 2,600 years ago and something they did every day — reduces the risk of skin tumors.

These breakthroughs are typically reported in the media as “this food fights skin cancer” or “that food linked to cancer protection.” In reality, humans are designed to both get a lot of sun and also eat the foods that “fight” skin cancer. It’s the removal of these foods from our diet that may be a leading cause of the the skin cancer epidemic.

Talk to your doctor about your personal skin cancer risks, based on skin type, climate and other factors. But also don’t wait for a cure to come in pill form. Prevention is the best medicine, and the best food is the best prevention.

The Spartan Diet is loaded with all the foods researchers have found to prevent skin cancer. We also call for plenty of outdoor excercise. Doing both wisely in consultation with your doctor is your best approach to optimal health free of vitamin D defficiency and cancer of any kind, including skin cancer.

People talk about “processed foods,” but it’s a confusing term because some processing is good and necessary, and some is bad and unnecessary.

The Spartan Diet draws a very sharp distinction between foods processed for eating on the one hand, and those processed for preservation on the other. Although the Spartan Diet is made up almost entirely of raw, whole, unprocessed foods — at least when you buy or pick them — foods that have been processed for eating are on the diet. Olive oil, for example, has been processed. The oil has been extracted from olives, and that’s a process — and a necessary one if you want olive oil. However, it has not been processed for preservation. Good olive oil hasn’t been pasteurized, irradiated, or subjected to any process to give it shelf life. Olive oil stays good for months on its own, if properly handled, so no such intervention is necessary. High-quality, organic extra-virgin olive oil is a processed food. But because the processing isn’t for preservation, it’s OK.

Here’s the problem: Food decays. As soon as an animal has been killed, or a plant food has been removed from the plant or soil, it begins a process of decline. Some foods, such as grains, stay perfectly good for years. Some fruits can last days or weeks after being picked. Others, such as lettuce, decline in hours.

As foods decay, the taste, smell, and appearance are transformed. As a survival mechanism, we are hard-wired to be attracted to fresh foods and repulsed by old foods. Nature is looking out for us. Our preference for fresh foods is designed to keep us healthy.

In order to manage the mass distribution of food cost effectively by reducing spoilage, and to make seasonal foods available for sale all year, people have come up with processes that slow or hide this decay. Food preservation is all about hiding the age of food, and tricking human instinct into accepting old food as fresh.

In ancient times, people salted and dried foods for preservation. These processes are still used, but we also have more modern methods that include canning, pickling, irradiation, pasteurization and many others. (Food companies also use food additives to preserve and improve the appearance of old food, but this post is about understanding processed foods, rather than food additives.)

Just about every food or drink that comes in a bottle, can, carton, box, bag or plastic container has been processed for preservation. And because of this processing, which universally degrades nutritional and gastronomic quality, these foods are not on the Spartan Diet. (One notable exception is frozen foods, which are generally good enough if fresh versions are unavailable.)

Most food preservation methods are products of advancing science, technology and infrastructure improvements. But in the last few decades, our civilization has advanced to the point where we can eat fresh foods every day, and never eat foods that have been processed for preservation. A historically unprecedented variety of fresh, whole, raw un-adulterated foods are easily available to the vast majority of people in the industrialized world.

People still buy foods processed for preservation, largely because they are far more aggressively marketed (the processing and additives turn them into a branded product) and because they can appear to be cheaper. But they’re not necessary. And avoiding all such processed foods, and eating a diet of fresh foods, you can enjoy much better health — and far better tasting meals.

Spartan Diet foods are simply foods of the highest quality. Foods that have been processed for the purpose of making old food look fresh just aren’t good enough.

The volunteers in the study who ate five tablespoons of tomato paste every day were on average 33 percent more protected against sunburn than the control group. Researchers calculated that this quantity of tomatos is the equivalent of constantly wearing a 1.3 SPF sunblock.

The scientists attribute this effect to an antioxidant present in tomatoes called lycopene, which is also responsible for giving tomatoes their red color. It’s also found in red carrots, watermelons and papayas.

Lycopene has also been linked in the past with protection against age-related events like macular degeneration, the formation of skin wrinkles, prostate cancer and the rise in bad cholesterol.

The research suggests that we should re-think our understanding of sun damage and skin cancer as not just about exposure, but also diet.

In the past few decades, we have seen dramatic rises in both Vitamin D deficiency and skin cancer, one thought to be caused by not enough sun, and the other by too much sun.

Of course, individual cases vary — and statistical changes can be partly determined by the immigration of people to climates incompatible with their skin types — but in general the rise in skin cancer may be closely linked to the degradation of diet.

In the past ten years, an enormous number of discoveries have been made about the link between diet and skin cancer. Broccoli, green tea, grapes, pomegranates, onions, red kidney beans, blueberries, cranberries, blackberries, rasperries, strawberries, apples, pecans, cherries, plums and black beans, tumeric (every single one of them a Spartan Diet superfood) have all been found to contain compounds that “fight” skin cancer.

Even extra-virgin olive oil applied to the skin after sun expsure — a practice the Spartans started in Ancient Greece more than 2,600 years ago and something they did every day — reduces the risk of skin tumors.

These breakthroughs are typically reported in the media as “this food fights skin cancer” or “that food linked to cancer protection.” In reality, humans are designed to both get a lot of sun and also eat the foods that “fight” skin cancer. It’s the removal of these foods from our diet that may be a leading cause of the the skin cancer epidemic.

Talk to your doctor about your personal skin cancer risks, based on skin type, climate and other factors. But also don’t wait for a cure to come in pill form. Prevention is the best medicine, and the best food is the best prevention.

The Spartan Diet is loaded with all the foods researchers have found to prevent skin cancer. We also call for plenty of outdoor excercise. Doing both wisely in consultation with your doctor is your best approach to optimal health free of vitamin D defficiency and cancer of any kind, including skin cancer.

People talk about “processed foods,” but it’s a confusing term because some processing is good and necessary, and some is bad and unnecessary.

The Spartan Diet draws a very sharp distinction between foods processed for eating on the one hand, and those processed for preservation on the other. Although the Spartan Diet is made up almost entirely of raw, whole, unprocessed foods — at least when you buy or pick them — foods that have been processed for eating are on the diet. Olive oil, for example, has been processed. The oil has been extracted from olives, and that’s a process — and a necessary one if you want olive oil. However, it has not been processed for preservation. Good olive oil hasn’t been pasteurized, irradiated, or subjected to any process to give it shelf life. Olive oil stays good for months on its own, if properly handled, so no such intervention is necessary. High-quality, organic extra-virgin olive oil is a processed food. But because the processing isn’t for preservation, it’s OK.

Here’s the problem: Food decays. As soon as an animal has been killed, or a plant food has been removed from the plant or soil, it begins a process of decline. Some foods, such as grains, stay perfectly good for years. Some fruits can last days or weeks after being picked. Others, such as lettuce, decline in hours.

As foods decay, the taste, smell, and appearance are transformed. As a survival mechanism, we are hard-wired to be attracted to fresh foods and repulsed by old foods. Nature is looking out for us. Our preference for fresh foods is designed to keep us healthy.

In order to manage the mass distribution of food cost effectively by reducing spoilage, and to make seasonal foods available for sale all year, people have come up with processes that slow or hide this decay. Food preservation is all about hiding the age of food, and tricking human instinct into accepting old food as fresh.

In ancient times, people salted and dried foods for preservation. These processes are still used, but we also have more modern methods that include canning, pickling, irradiation, pasteurization and many others. (Food companies also use food additives to preserve and improve the appearance of old food, but this post is about understanding processed foods, rather than food additives.)

Just about every food or drink that comes in a bottle, can, carton, box, bag or plastic container has been processed for preservation. And because of this processing, which universally degrades nutritional and gastronomic quality, these foods are not on the Spartan Diet. (One notable exception is frozen foods, which are generally good enough if fresh versions are unavailable.)

Most food preservation methods are products of advancing science, technology and infrastructure improvements. But in the last few decades, our civilization has advanced to the point where we can eat fresh foods every day, and never eat foods that have been processed for preservation. A historically unprecedented variety of fresh, whole, raw un-adulterated foods are easily available to the vast majority of people in the industrialized world.

People still buy foods processed for preservation, largely because they are far more aggressively marketed (the processing and additives turn them into a branded product) and because they can appear to be cheaper. But they’re not necessary. And avoiding all such processed foods, and eating a diet of fresh foods, you can enjoy much better health — and far better tasting meals.

Spartan Diet foods are simply foods of the highest quality. Foods that have been processed for the purpose of making old food look fresh just aren’t good enough.

The report cited Department of Defense data showing that 75 percent of Americans 17 to 24 years old are ineligible to join the military. “Being overweight or obese turns out to be the leading medical reason why applicants fail to qualify for military service.”

Healthcare experts say the obesity crisis is now so bad that it threatens national security.

The report’s recommendation focuses on removing junk food from schools. That’s a great recommendation, but it doesn’t go far enough.

It a nutshell, we’re growing so soft and weak as a nation that we may soon be incapable of defending ourselves.

Most people don’t know this, but ancient Sparta faced a comparable crisis.

In Ancient Greece, wars were fought mainly by aristocrats — wealthy land-owners who could afford helmets, shields, spears and swords and the leisure time to train. Because of Sparta’s many geographical advantages, Spartan aristocrats grew very rich and the country was very hard to invade. The fighting class grew soft, so soft that Sparta faced what we would call a national security crisis.

A series of events lost to history resulted in the total transformation of Spartan society into the awesome war machine we remember even today. History credits a reformer named Lycurgus, who sparked a revolution of Spartan government, society and culture.

Plutarch wrote:

Lycurgus’s laws meant wealthy Spartans “could no longer spend their lives at home, lying on their couches and stuffing themselves with unwholesome delicacies, like pigs being fattened for slaughter. No longer could they ruin not only their minds but also their bodies, becoming so weak by lazy overindulgence that they needed long sleep, warm baths, and about as much care as if they were constantly sick.”

As part of the Lycurgan reforms, land was taken from the rich, and re-distributed equally among citizens. Each male child was given a huge farm at birth (although women could own and inherit property, too).

In traditional ancient societies, the wealthy become unhealthy because they eat too much fatty foods and don’t get enough exercise, while the poor become unhealthy because they often have nutritional inadequacies. (Only in the industrial age do we have both: People get too many calories and also suffer nutritional deficits.) Sparta banned both. The rich were no longer able to eat delicacies. The poor were fed the same foods as the rich — plain, varietal, fresh, whole foods in very measured quantities. In fact, the richest Spartans (with the biggest and best farms) were required by law to feed the rest their best foods.

At the age of 7, boys entered the famous Spartan agoge for 23 years of military training, which involved hours of daily outdoor exercise, among other things. The “herd,” as they called the boys, were hardened against heat, cold, hunger, pain and fatigue.

Less is known about the education of girls, but we do know they trained hard also, even in Olympic events like wrestling, javelin, discuss, running and so on. Spartan women scandalized Greece for centuries. Disparaged as “thigh flashers,” because they wore short skirts (unlike the head-to-toe garb required of proper Athenian women), Spartan girls and women were famous for singing, dancing and for an exercise that involved jumping straight up and kicking one’s own butt with the heels. (The picture top right is of a statue of an amazingly fit Spartan teenage girl from about 550 B.C.)

Unlike aristocratic women from other wealthy Greek city-states, who were invariably soft, white and a little sick from wearing toxic make-up, Spartan women were famous for being ripped, tan, muscular and beautiful even though they didn’t wear any makeup.

It’s likely that obesity was non-existent in post-Lycurgus Sparta. Among men and boys, even minor chubbiness probably didn’t exist. The combination of constant exercise, incredibly healthy food and a conspicuous “frugality of the diet” prevented that.

Ancient Sparta faced a similar crisis to our own. And they solved it so completely that 2,600 years later they’re still famous for physical fitness.

What can we learn from them about raising healthy children?

Clearly dragging 7-year-olds out of their homes and into boot camp is out of the question. Our society is based on individuals and families, rather than on Spartan-style, state-sponsored collectivism. And we like it that way. Still, Ancient Sparta has much to teach us about lifelong fitness.

We don’t know much about the daily lives of Spartan families. But we do know that Spartan parents didn’t pamper their kids. Plutarch tells us that Spartan children “grew up free and active, and without any sort of cry-baby ways. Spartan children were not afraid of the dark, or finicky about their food.”

It’s also worth pointing out that Spartan children slept all night (boys mostly slept outdoors under the stars), and didn’t even have torches, let alone Xbox, to keep them up late. Of course, Spartan kids never ate processed food, junk food, white sugar, preservatives, artificial flavors, soda, candy bars or any of the other junk foods that wouldn’t be invented for more than 2,000 years. Instead, they ate fruit, vegetables, whole grains, wild fish, seeds, goat cheese, and meat and poultry in very small quantities (all “free range”).

This is the opposite of how American children typically grow up — un-free, inactive and being crybabies about everything. They’re afraid of the dark and finicky about their food. Worse, they live in a world of media, with a lot of their interaction with the world taking place through TV, computer, video-game and cell phone screens.

Instead of indoctrination in martial virtues and devotion to the nation, American kids watch hours of TV every day and are indoctrinated in the “virtues” of consumer culture and personal gratification. The most heavily advertised children’s products are incredibly unhealthy foods. The average child is bombarded by thousands of ads per year designed to imprint on them a strong desire to eat packaged breakfast cereals (some of which are more than 40 percent sugar), snacks, candy, soda, and fast food laden with ingredients proved to promote cancer, heart disease, hyperactivity, obesity and a long list of other maladies.

We can and we must fix the problem. We have to dismantle the industrial junk-food complex, and replace public school cafeteria junk food with real food. But most of all, we have to change the culture of parenting in America.

Ancient Spartans achieved incredible physical fitness by obeying laws written by Lycurgus and enforced by the state. But you can achieve the same thing for your children by following and enforcing some common-sense rules that will make your kids a little more Spartan:

1. Never ask children what they want to eat.

The best way to engender bad food habits is to invite kids into the decision-making process. That gets them thinking of the world of junk foods they’d rather be having, and focuses on personal immediate gratification. Instead, get them used to the idea that parents decide what they eat, and kids eat what they’re given.

2. Limit screen time.

Kids keep spending more and more time sitting and watching TV and movies, playing video games, using the PC or using a cell phone. This passive “activity” has displaced sports, exercise, personal social interaction and outdoor time. Take 24 hours in a day, and subtract 9 hours for sleep, the time they’re in school and doing homework, the time they should be doing physical activities, meal times and other activities, and arrive at a number, which is probably one or two hours. Enforce that number as the maximum amount of time each day they can sit there watching a screen.

When schedules get tight, screen time should be the first to go.

3. Maximize outdoor time.

My cousin goes running with his kids almost every day. Why not? Build solid outdoor family time into your daily life. Kids need sunshine, exercise and interaction with trees and plants in order to be healthy. Make them go outside.

For kids younger than, say, 10, just turning them loose outside guarantees that they’ll exercise. That’s what kids do: They run, climb, wrestle, goof around. Kids are naturally physical when they go outside.

4. Make meals from scratch, and get kids to help.

We’ve experimented on kids to find out what happens if they eat a lot of processed, industrial junk food. What we learned is that they get fat, sick and weak. It’s time to learn from that failure and embrace what we know: Real food, made at home from scratch is the healthiest kind.

Sure, we’ve forgotten all the knowledge our great-grandmothers knew about food. But you can learn anything on the Internet. Re-embrace home-cooked meals and make your kids help fix it. That way, when they go out on their own they won’t rely on packaged junk food.

5. Teach kids to be cynical about advertising.

Food companies are programming our children for failure and suffering. The least we can do is constantly remind kids what’s going on with advertising. Nearly all ads aimed at kids are for junk foods known to cause heart disease, diabetes, cancer and other conditions. Constantly tell them what you know about what certain advertised foods do to the body, and why they even show ads in the first place. Make your kid media-savvy.

6. Don’t let kids eat foods “designed” for kids.

Any food that’s aimed at children — Happy Meals, Froot Loops, SpaghettiOs and all the rest — is bound to be incredibly bad for health. If it’s targeted at kids, don’t let your kids eat it.

7. Never let kids snack on “products,” only produce.

The corporations have trained us through advertising to believe that snacks come in the form of packaged products. Instead, all between-meal eating for both kids and adults should be produce, not products.

If you’re going to let kids snack, let them snack on fruit, raw nuts, seeds and other whole foods. Never let them eat snacks that have been manufactured.

8. No screens in bedrooms.

Kids stay up too late because of TVs, computers and cell phones in bedrooms. They don’t get enough sleep, which causes them to be too tired for physical activity. They copy adults, and use caffeine as a pick-me-up. The whole cycle that results in fat, weak and sick kids starts with bad sleep.

Recent research has shown that looking at the illuminated screen of a TV, PC, cell phone or iPad just before going to bed triggers insomnia, because it confuses the brain about whether it’s daytime or nighttime.

Simply ban anything with a screen from being brought into kids’ bedrooms. When you make them go to bed at night, they’ll have nothing to do but read — or sleep.

9. No cell phones in bedrooms at night.

If your child carries a cell phone, their friends may be calling or texting at random hours in the night. When this happens, kids tend to wake up and respond. All this interrupted sleep causes all kinds of health problems. Don’t allow it.

Give your child or teen a cell phone only on the condition that they hand it over every night.

10. Ban all soda.

Americans now get hundreds of calories per day in beverages, often sodas. It’s not the calories per se — diet soda is bad, too. Get your kids in the habit of drinking filtered water when they’re thirsty.

These simple, common-sense rules will make your child far healthier, smarter, happier and more successful in life than allowing them to become just another depressing statistic.

You probably wouldn’t want your child to grow up in Ancient Sparta. But we can all learn a thing or to about raising healthy children from a culture that produced so many incredibly healthy citizens.

The report cited Department of Defense data showing that 75 percent of Americans 17 to 24 years old are ineligible to join the military. “Being overweight or obese turns out to be the leading medical reason why applicants fail to qualify for military service.”

Healthcare experts say the obesity crisis is now so bad that it threatens national security.

The report’s recommendation focuses on removing junk food from schools. That’s a great recommendation, but it doesn’t go far enough.

It a nutshell, we’re growing so soft and weak as a nation that we may soon be incapable of defending ourselves.

Most people don’t know this, but ancient Sparta faced a comparable crisis.

In Ancient Greece, wars were fought mainly by aristocrats — wealthy land-owners who could afford helmets, shields, spears and swords and the leisure time to train. Because of Sparta’s many geographical advantages, Spartan aristocrats grew very rich and the country was very hard to invade. The fighting class grew soft, so soft that Sparta faced what we would call a national security crisis.

A series of events lost to history resulted in the total transformation of Spartan society into the awesome war machine we remember even today. History credits a reformer named Lycurgus, who sparked a revolution of Spartan government, society and culture.

Plutarch wrote:

Lycurgus’s laws meant wealthy Spartans “could no longer spend their lives at home, lying on their couches and stuffing themselves with unwholesome delicacies, like pigs being fattened for slaughter. No longer could they ruin not only their minds but also their bodies, becoming so weak by lazy overindulgence that they needed long sleep, warm baths, and about as much care as if they were constantly sick.”

As part of the Lycurgan reforms, land was taken from the rich, and re-distributed equally among citizens. Each male child was given a huge farm at birth (although women could own and inherit property, too).

In traditional ancient societies, the wealthy become unhealthy because they eat too much fatty foods and don’t get enough exercise, while the poor become unhealthy because they often have nutritional inadequacies. (Only in the industrial age do we have both: People get too many calories and also suffer nutritional deficits.) Sparta banned both. The rich were no longer able to eat delicacies. The poor were fed the same foods as the rich — plain, varietal, fresh, whole foods in very measured quantities. In fact, the richest Spartans (with the biggest and best farms) were required by law to feed the rest their best foods.

At the age of 7, boys entered the famous Spartan agoge for 23 years of military training, which involved hours of daily outdoor exercise, among other things. The “herd,” as they called the boys, were hardened against heat, cold, hunger, pain and fatigue.

Less is known about the education of girls, but we do know they trained hard also, even in Olympic events like wrestling, javelin, discuss, running and so on. Spartan women scandalized Greece for centuries. Disparaged as “thigh flashers,” because they wore short skirts (unlike the head-to-toe garb required of proper Athenian women), Spartan girls and women were famous for singing, dancing and for an exercise that involved jumping straight up and kicking one’s own butt with the heels. (The picture top right is of a statue of an amazingly fit Spartan teenage girl from about 550 B.C.)

Unlike aristocratic women from other wealthy Greek city-states, who were invariably soft, white and a little sick from wearing toxic make-up, Spartan women were famous for being ripped, tan, muscular and beautiful even though they didn’t wear any makeup.

It’s likely that obesity was non-existent in post-Lycurgus Sparta. Among men and boys, even minor chubbiness probably didn’t exist. The combination of constant exercise, incredibly healthy food and a conspicuous “frugality of the diet” prevented that.

Ancient Sparta faced a similar crisis to our own. And they solved it so completely that 2,600 years later they’re still famous for physical fitness.

What can we learn from them about raising healthy children?

Clearly dragging 7-year-olds out of their homes and into boot camp is out of the question. Our society is based on individuals and families, rather than on Spartan-style, state-sponsored collectivism. And we like it that way. Still, Ancient Sparta has much to teach us about lifelong fitness.

We don’t know much about the daily lives of Spartan families. But we do know that Spartan parents didn’t pamper their kids. Plutarch tells us that Spartan children “grew up free and active, and without any sort of cry-baby ways. Spartan children were not afraid of the dark, or finicky about their food.”

It’s also worth pointing out that Spartan children slept all night (boys mostly slept outdoors under the stars), and didn’t even have torches, let alone Xbox, to keep them up late. Of course, Spartan kids never ate processed food, junk food, white sugar, preservatives, artificial flavors, soda, candy bars or any of the other junk foods that wouldn’t be invented for more than 2,000 years. Instead, they ate fruit, vegetables, whole grains, wild fish, seeds, goat cheese, and meat and poultry in very small quantities (all “free range”).

This is the opposite of how American children typically grow up — un-free, inactive and being crybabies about everything. They’re afraid of the dark and finicky about their food. Worse, they live in a world of media, with a lot of their interaction with the world taking place through TV, computer, video-game and cell phone screens.

Instead of indoctrination in martial virtues and devotion to the nation, American kids watch hours of TV every day and are indoctrinated in the “virtues” of consumer culture and personal gratification. The most heavily advertised children’s products are incredibly unhealthy foods. The average child is bombarded by thousands of ads per year designed to imprint on them a strong desire to eat packaged breakfast cereals (some of which are more than 40 percent sugar), snacks, candy, soda, and fast food laden with ingredients proved to promote cancer, heart disease, hyperactivity, obesity and a long list of other maladies.

We can and we must fix the problem. We have to dismantle the industrial junk-food complex, and replace public school cafeteria junk food with real food. But most of all, we have to change the culture of parenting in America.

Ancient Spartans achieved incredible physical fitness by obeying laws written by Lycurgus and enforced by the state. But you can achieve the same thing for your children by following and enforcing some common-sense rules that will make your kids a little more Spartan:

1. Never ask children what they want to eat.

The best way to engender bad food habits is to invite kids into the decision-making process. That gets them thinking of the world of junk foods they’d rather be having, and focuses on personal immediate gratification. Instead, get them used to the idea that parents decide what they eat, and kids eat what they’re given.

2. Limit screen time.

Kids keep spending more and more time sitting and watching TV and movies, playing video games, using the PC or using a cell phone. This passive “activity” has displaced sports, exercise, personal social interaction and outdoor time. Take 24 hours in a day, and subtract 9 hours for sleep, the time they’re in school and doing homework, the time they should be doing physical activities, meal times and other activities, and arrive at a number, which is probably one or two hours. Enforce that number as the maximum amount of time each day they can sit there watching a screen.

When schedules get tight, screen time should be the first to go.

3. Maximize outdoor time.

My cousin goes running with his kids almost every day. Why not? Build solid outdoor family time into your daily life. Kids need sunshine, exercise and interaction with trees and plants in order to be healthy. Make them go outside.

For kids younger than, say, 10, just turning them loose outside guarantees that they’ll exercise. That’s what kids do: They run, climb, wrestle, goof around. Kids are naturally physical when they go outside.

4. Make meals from scratch, and get kids to help.

We’ve experimented on kids to find out what happens if they eat a lot of processed, industrial junk food. What we learned is that they get fat, sick and weak. It’s time to learn from that failure and embrace what we know: Real food, made at home from scratch is the healthiest kind.

Sure, we’ve forgotten all the knowledge our great-grandmothers knew about food. But you can learn anything on the Internet. Re-embrace home-cooked meals and make your kids help fix it. That way, when they go out on their own they won’t rely on packaged junk food.

5. Teach kids to be cynical about advertising.

Food companies are programming our children for failure and suffering. The least we can do is constantly remind kids what’s going on with advertising. Nearly all ads aimed at kids are for junk foods known to cause heart disease, diabetes, cancer and other conditions. Constantly tell them what you know about what certain advertised foods do to the body, and why they even show ads in the first place. Make your kid media-savvy.

6. Don’t let kids eat foods “designed” for kids.

Any food that’s aimed at children — Happy Meals, Froot Loops, SpaghettiOs and all the rest — is bound to be incredibly bad for health. If it’s targeted at kids, don’t let your kids eat it.

7. Never let kids snack on “products,” only produce.

The corporations have trained us through advertising to believe that snacks come in the form of packaged products. Instead, all between-meal eating for both kids and adults should be produce, not products.

If you’re going to let kids snack, let them snack on fruit, raw nuts, seeds and other whole foods. Never let them eat snacks that have been manufactured.

8. No screens in bedrooms.

Kids stay up too late because of TVs, computers and cell phones in bedrooms. They don’t get enough sleep, which causes them to be too tired for physical activity. They copy adults, and use caffeine as a pick-me-up. The whole cycle that results in fat, weak and sick kids starts with bad sleep.

Recent research has shown that looking at the illuminated screen of a TV, PC, cell phone or iPad just before going to bed triggers insomnia, because it confuses the brain about whether it’s daytime or nighttime.

Simply ban anything with a screen from being brought into kids’ bedrooms. When you make them go to bed at night, they’ll have nothing to do but read — or sleep.

9. No cell phones in bedrooms at night.

If your child carries a cell phone, their friends may be calling or texting at random hours in the night. When this happens, kids tend to wake up and respond. All this interrupted sleep causes all kinds of health problems. Don’t allow it.

Give your child or teen a cell phone only on the condition that they hand it over every night.

10. Ban all soda.

Americans now get hundreds of calories per day in beverages, often sodas. It’s not the calories per se — diet soda is bad, too. Get your kids in the habit of drinking filtered water when they’re thirsty.

These simple, common-sense rules will make your child far healthier, smarter, happier and more successful in life than allowing them to become just another depressing statistic.

You probably wouldn’t want your child to grow up in Ancient Sparta. But we can all learn a thing or to about raising healthy children from a culture that produced so many incredibly healthy citizens.