The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • L6

LF4Z0613-A-L -Composite Proof 0:00 0:00 RLF4Z0613OL6FLF4Z0613OL6 LF4Z (PLUS 4 ZONE PAGES) 6L 6L RR RR BlueRedYellowBlack Blue RedYellowBlack L6 Sunday, June 13, 2004 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution substitutes vegetables for starches and a cauliflower-cheese blend for mashed potatoes and has a lot more cheeses. says Guy Thompson of Proof of the Pudding, people are At the Westin Peachtree Plaza, meeting planner Nicole Honeywood says also getting more requests for is so routine that I now critique menus to make sure that low-carb eaters have options on each menu She says getting twice as many requests for low-carb fare than a year ago, and 50 times more than in 1999. Some new items include soy chips, guilt-free ice cream and cheese displays. Kathy Hart of the Georgia Center for Continuing Courtyard Cafe says seeing lots more people ordering bacon and eggs without grits or hash browns, and more vegetable choices over meats. Not too long ago, dietary restrictions were for religious or allergenic reasons.

But now most of the special requests are from carb counters, says Paul Breslin, managing director at the Sheraton. Even room service has changed. bacon and eggs than Breslin says. low-carb craze is really huge right Thompson says corporate meeting planners generally want to please both dieters and those still rather dig into something fattening. are telling us, going to be a percentage of our guests on a low-carb diet, so we want to make sure plenty of variety, something for The good news for bread, starch and sugar lovers: Thompson considers the low-carb phe- nomon a fad, not a trend.

a while, going to be less breads, less rice, less potatoes, more hummus, bruschetta, tomatoes, feta cheese. But fads go he says. knows when, but they what happened to the first known diet craze, which started with the publication of on in 1864 by William Banting, an English casket maker said to be so fat he tie his shoes. His regimen low carbs, but a lot of booze. Guess where he wound up? Then there was the Hollywood 18- day Diet, which emerged about 1935.

The theory was that grapefruit juice contained an enzyme that broke down fat rapidly. Ditto the vinegar diet. And no fluke that you no longer hear much about the Scarsdale Diet or the liquid- centered Cambridge Diet. Or the cabbage soup diet, which allows as much of the stuff as you can stand, any time of day. And then there was the acupuncture diet.

Not surprisingly, most people found it too hard to stick with. Rick Diamond Eggs, cheese, fruit and other low-carb fare are very much on the menu as meeting planners keep dieters in mind. Low-carb: Pasta, bread no longer stars at meetings Continued from L1 Tweens: Playing princess is big business Continued from L1 sprayed and her makeup done. Nine of her friends including two other birthday girls, Taylor Andrews and Charis White are all being whisked through the transformation from fourth-graders on summer vacation to Pop Star Princesses for a day, or more like an hour. right, Princess, what color do you want your Lauren Wildschut, a Sprayberry High School senior and Libby Lu counselor, asks 9-year-old Hannah Lupas.

The Libby Lu staff, all wearing T-shirts that read a Princess and This is My move the girls through their stations with the speed and precision of a Daytona 500 pit crew. us like NASCAR for laughs Wildschut. Club Libby Lu, which started in 2000 and now has 37 stores (three in metro Atlanta), is part of a strong push to sell the princess fantasy to girls. have really gone after these kids says Cynthia Engelke, manager of research and trends for Youth Intelligence, a New York trend-spotting company, more out there for girls than for Marketing potential a myth The tween-girl market is imprecise. Some peg it between ages 8 and 12, others 5 and 12.

newly released Tween Intelligence Report puts it at 9 to 14, while product line is aimed at ages 2 to 8. But if a moving target, still a hugely lucrative one. Depending on how the numbers are sliced, there are about 14 million tween girls in the United States, and they are a $10 billion-plus market, according to Yankel- ovich Youth Monitor. No matter how the tween-girl market is defined, the is a huge part of it, as companies update and play endless variations on myths and stories that go back centuries in some cases. Cinderella Part 2, a says Engelke.

princess thing is now a little At Club Libby Lu, for instance, girls rarely go for the traditional Enchanted Princess look with tiara and wand, says Valerie Rousey, director of the new store in North Point Mall in Alpharetta. They want to be a Party Pop Princess or a Roll Chick Princess, with a fake wireless mike so they can pretend to be Hilary Duff or Jessica Simpson, both of whom blast nonstop on the sound system. like doing the princess thing, but they like to be cool, too. Dani sits in front of the karaoke and sings along with Hilary Duff all the says Dr. Beth Bradford-Streever, a Marietta chiropractor whose daughter Dani, 5, is getting made over into a Roll Chick Princess at the North Point Libby Lu.

Disney boosts royal trend You can hardly walk into a multiplex these days without tripping over a princess movie. with Princess Fiona, is still hot at the box office, after a spring that saw and Prince and In July, Duff stars in Cinderella (Southern California girl loses her cellphone rather than her glass slipper), and August brings Anne Hathaway back for Princess Diaries 2: Royal The Disney company has helped put princesses on their modern-day pedestal. Its Consumer Products division gathered most of the Disney princess characters Ariel, Belle, Cinderella, together in 2000 and started pushing them as a product line. fastest-growing brand, with retail sales of $1.3 billion last year, says division Chairman Andy Mooney. He says the 2004 target is $2 billion.

No wonder, with the endless amounts of princess gear a total of 22,000 individual Disney items. There are clothes, DVDs, toys, bedroom paint, underwear, books, clock radios, TV sets and TV shows Princess Power airs 15 times a week on the Disney Channel) and live shows. And the princess indulgence does not come cheap. Enjoying the fantasy Last week, Walt Disney World started staging My Disney Perfectly Princess Tea Parties at its Grand Floridian Resort Spa. Held once a day, the party includes tea for two, princess cakes, a parade and a meet-and-greet with a Disney staffer playing Princess Aurora of The cost is $200 for one adult and one child, and $135 extra per additional child.

If you have any money left, you can then head to the Princess Room at Downtown Disney, a whole souvenir store devoted to princess-themed goods. Club Libby Lu charges $20 to $30 per girl for one of its makeover parties, depending on bells and whistles, so a 10-girl party can run $300, not counting purchases. so much cute stuff, you could buy quite a says Bradford-Streever, surveying the crammed Libby Lu shelves. One possible reason for the princessing of tween America is that unlike a lot of what floats around in the popular culture, pretty safe, so parents, as well as their daughters, are attracted to it. definitely safe compared to a lot of other says Mechele Flaum, CEO of Marketing Fire, a New York consultant on youth branding.

used to be the Spice Girls, then you had Britney, and now you have and some parents comfortable with that image for the younger girls. age is the last time you and your kids are in roles where clear one of you is the child and one is the she adds. Come the teen years, tween marketing experts say, and the princess fantasy fades quickly. Abbey older sister Sydney, 13, came along for her makeover party and was a good sport but was giving off a clear this-is-so-not-my-idea vibe. too cool for says Tammy, her mom.

become more self-conscious. interested in boys and branching out, and it makes you look Brooke Alexander, 18, a counselor at the North Point Mall Club Libby Lu, says about the inevitable decline of the princess fantasy. So Club Libby Lu and Disney tea parties see a lot of teenage girls lining up to get in. But everything comes full circle. done parties with 30-year-old women, and our store in Chicago did a party for a says Valentine-Paten.

costumes fit, but we throw a boa and a crown on them and Walt Disney World Meredith Bell, 4, of Pearland, Texas, plays dress-up at the World of Disney store at Walt Disney World. The princesses line is fastest-growing brand, with retail sales of $1.3 billion last year. JEAN SHIFRIN Staff Newly incarnated as a Roll Chick Princess, birthday girl Kaleigh Hall 7, dances at Club Libby Lu at North Point Mall. Abbey Grant (from left), Charis White and Kendall Frawley are in the high-energy midst of a Party Pop Princess makeover at Club Libby Lu at Town Center mall. RICH ADDICKS Staff CHARLES SEABROOK cseabrook WILD GEORGIA Sourwood puts on show most of year Starting to bloom now in woodlands especially those on moist slopes in the mountains and in the Piedmont is the sourwood tree, whose fragrant white flowers will stay vibrant for a month or more.

Honeybees make a rich, renowned honey, prized by gourmets, from the nectar. The Georgia Native Plant Society holds the sourwood in such high esteem that it named the tree as the 2004 Plant of the Year. Sourwood, which gets its name from its sour-tasting leaves, is among the latest of the flowering shrubs and trees to bloom. Its small, bell- shaped blossoms dangle on gently drooping sprays, or racemes, 4 to 10 inches long. The racemes give the tree a soft, lacy look, a welcome sight at a time when most flowering trees are past their peak.

It is sometimes known as the lily of the valley tree because its flowers resemble those of the garden plant. As the sourwood foliage emerged early this spring, it had a bronzy cast to it. But now, its foliage is a glossy emerald green. The flowers against the lustrous leaves are quite a show. The tree itself is small to medium-sized, reaching 50 feet tall and 12 inches in diameter.

The blooms will appear through August and then turn into egg-shaped, creamy-tan fruit capsules. About that time, its foliage will begin donning fall tints, some of the earliest leaves to change color in forests. By the end of September, the leaves will be deep shades of orange, scarlet, crimson and burgundy and will stay that way for most of autumn. Even after the leaves are gone, the fruit will stay on the tree, darken with age and provide a picturesque silhouette in winter. Fallen chestnut Another tree that blooms profusely in early summer is the American chestnut, once the dominant tree in Appalachian hardwood forests.

Before the chestnut blight came in the mid-1930s, mountain woodlands in early summer appeared as if dusted with snow from chestnuts putting forth their white flowers. In the fall, the savory nuts were food for numerous creatures, including people. But the blight felled millions of chestnuts, many over 100 feet tall and 6 feet in diameter. Now, the only living chestnuts in the forest are saplings sprouting from old stumps. They might grow 20 feet tall before they, too, succumb to the blight.

If you hike in the mountains, you can still see huge chestnut logs and stumps on the forest floor, moot testimony to their former greatness. Mating call of cicadas While walking the other day around Fort Mountain State Park in Murray County looking for chestnut saplings, we almost had to use sign language to communicate. All across North Georgia, the 17- year Brood has emerged from underground for the first time since 1987 with a racket that can easily drown out a casual conversation. For the rest of June, the cicadas will be singing their love songs in hopes of attracting a mate. After mating, go back into the ground until 2021.

In the sky The moon will be new on Thursday. On Saturday evening, look for a thin crescent moon low in the west just after sunset, says Fernbank Science Center astronomer David Dundee. Mercury, Venus, Mars and Saturn are all too close to the sun to be seen easily. Jupiter is high in the northwest just after dark and sets in the west about midnight. The sourwood, which is starting to bloom now, was named the 2004 Plant of the Year by the Georgia Native Plant Society.

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