While a vegetable-based diet is good for your health, a fish-heavy diet may be even better.

According to a new study of two African villages, only three percent of fish-eaters had high blood pressure, compared to 16 percent of vegetarians, despite diets that were otherwise identical in terms of salt and calorie intake.

And cholesterol-levels were lower in the fish-eating villagers compared to vegetable-eating villagers, according to the report published this week in the journal The Lancet.

"We believe that the persistently raised plasma concentration of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids are probably the underlying cause of the unusual trends in blood pressure and cholesterol,'' wrote lead study author Dr. Paolo Pauletto of the Department of Medicine at the University of Padova in Italy.

The new report included two sets of Tanzanian villagers, 645 of whom ate a primarily vegetarian diet and 618 who lived on the eastern shore of Lake Nyasa and ate 300 to 600 grams of fish a day -- the equivalent of three to four meals of fish. Eskimos eat about 400 'rams daily of fish; Japanese fisherman eat about 200 grams daily.

The finding that fish-eaters had lower cholesterol was ''surprising,'' because some studies have shown that taking fish oil supplements lead to higher cholesterol levels, according to the report.

"However, under conditions in which the intake of saturated fat is kept low, fish-oil supplementation is accompanied by falls in very-low-density-lipoprotein, LDL and HDL cholesterol.'' *** Hold the iced tea and mineral water. When they eat lunch out, business people are again bellying up to the bar -- but ever so decorously.

"Drinking is back,'' declares Alix Michel, a New York business-development manager who has resumed ordering a lunch-time drink after a long dry spell.

Nobody is quite sure why the prohibition that set in about a decade ago has lifted just now. But in fitness-crazed Los Angeles, at least, the formerly abstemious have embraced news reports about wine's health benefits.

At Patina, a chic restaurant there that attracts studio executives and other business people, consumption of wine and beer is up 30 percent from a year ago, says Christine Splichal, the co-owner. She noticed that inhibitions loosened right after "60 Minutes'' aired a segment suggesting that wine reduced the risk of heart disease. "It was so funny to see people the following week ask for a glass of wine with lunch,'' she says.

But Isidore Kharash, a Chicago restaurant consultant, is dubious. "People were just waiting for an excuse,'' he says.

Indeed, the trend appears to be part of a backlash against self-denial. Now that even cigars are back in vogue, or so the reasoning goes, could a little wine at lunch hurt? "There is this rebellious desire to do something naughty,'' says Sunny Bates, an executive recruiter in New York. "Drinking at lunch is very naughty.'' Dwight B. Heath, a Brown University anthropologist and the author of "The International Handbook on Alcohol and Culture,'' also sees new permissiveness at work. "I think the pendulum has swung back a bit,'' he says.

Nobody is suggesting a return to the three-martini lunch, that career-killing relic of a more leisurely business era. As much as any other factor, restaurateurs finger the martini and its aftereffects for ushering in lunch-time prohibition in the first place. Today's executives, with their 80-hour weeks and sundry job insecurities, wouldn't dare succumb to such boozy abandon.

*** German soup makers, worried about fast-food rivals, fought back Wednesday with plans to restore soup at the top of the menu for this food-loving nation.

The newly-formed "German Soup Institute'' will campaign to ensure that Germans slurp more soup, in line with a tradition overtaken by 20th century mass-selling delicacies.

Concerned about their market share being diluted, the manufacturers want bowls of broth to be competing with burgers, chips, tacos and other snacks.

"The way it's going now people may one day be eating nothing but pizza and spaghetti,'' said Manfred Lange, chairman of the new group that hopes to put some zest back into soup, a meal that traces its origins to the Stone Age.

The Soup Institute said it was ready to take up the challenge.

Historical tidbits and other interesting soup facts will regularly be sent out to German media alongside a spiced-up advertising campaign coordinated by the institute.

"We don't want our children to grow up eating only hot dogs and hamburgers,'' Lange said. "We want to put soup back into the forefront of people's thinking and make especially younger people better acquainted with soup.'' Germans spend about $166 billion each year on food, but the amount they spend on soup has stagnated for years, officials from 26 soup companies in the organisation said.

People consume an average eight bowls of soup a month and Lange is confident that the newly formed Bonn-based pressure group can help the soup industry grab a bigger slice of their pie.

Lange confidently predicted that soup, with the right marketing campaign behind it, could become so popular among young people that they will even start asking for it in their favourite discotheque.

"It's a great energiser,'' he said. "You can live from soup alone. It's got all the important nutritional ingredients. There's no reason it can't be made available in discos.'' EDIBLES