Healthy menu at Action Long Island business breakfast

When the business group Action Long Island booked a breakfast at the Crest Hollow Country Club in Woodbury, it was sent a menu with the usual morning fare: eggs, bacon, toast with butter or jam, and coffee.

"We told them nooooo," said Sheldon Sackstein, Action Long Island's chairman. The meeting Tuesday was a kickoff to promote more healthy diets and exercise for Long Island's business community, and only egg whites, orange juice and whole wheat toast would do, Sackstein said.

Action Long Island partnered with several other organizations, including the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association, to get out the message to companies that they need to encourage better diets and exercise for their employees.

Twenty-two companies, representing 6,000 employees, were at the breakfast, including Leviton Manufacturing Corp. of Melville and Certilman Balin Adler & Hyman, the East Meadow-based law firm.

"Most business people, along with the rest of the population, don't exercise enough and don't eat healthy" foods, said Susan Somerville, executive director of North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, one of the speakers. The hospital, she said, has a "grassroots" wellness program for employees and is to begin a major ''get-healthy'' effort this summer.

The heart association passed out a guide suggesting 30 minutes of walking a day, and other health tips.

The overall conclusion among attendees: Too much time is spent at the lunch and dinner table and too little at the gym.

"We want employers to do everything they can do to encourage their employees to get moving," said Joseph Molloy, director of benefits at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in Lake Success.