What was going on when I was born?

In 1956, the story goes, Estes Kefauver, then a candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination, stopped at the supermarket and bought a packaged cherry pie. The picture on the package showed a slice stuffed with cherries. The pie inside the box, however, was mostly crust. Furious, the Senator from Tennessee introduced the first comprehensive legislation against deceptive food labeling. This month, nearly 30 years later, Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum, Democrat of Ohio, is expected to introduce a bill expanding that legislation by requiring that the sodium, potassium and fat content of all foods be listed on the label. ''How can anybody resist the right of all Americans to know what's in the food they buy,'' the Senator said in a recent interview. ''Right now they do not.'' In the decades between these two events, there have been numerous changes in food labeling requirements. ''There is a lot more information on today's labels,'' said Ronald Brewington, director of the food standards and labeling division of the United States Department of Agriculture, which reviews 120,000 labels each month. ''The argument now is between whether there should be more or whether what is there is too confusing.''

Calling on Congress ''to work with me,'' President Reagan warned tonight that ''a mindless stampede toward protectionism will be a one-way trip to economic distaster.'' In a nationally televised news conference, the President held firm against rising Congressional pressures to pass protectionist legislation. He said such restrictions could impair economic progress and result in retaliation that could ''deliver an economic death blow'' to thousands of American farms. Although Mr. Reagan sounded the tough antiprotectionist line, he and aides met today with Congressional leaders involved in drafting a trade bill that would incorporate elements of numerous pending bills and would strengthen the Administration's hand in combatting unfair trade practices. White House officials said that the Administration was willing to work with the Congress on such trade legislation.

The Senate voted today to establish a new Government program under which farmers could bring up to 350,000 aliens into the United States to harvest perishable fruit and vegetables. The proposal was adopted by a vote of 51 to 44 as an amendment to a comprehensive bill designed to curtail illegal immigration. The Senate last week rejected a similar amendment by a vote of 50 to 48. The two proposals differed in one significant way: The amendment adopted today set an explicit limit on the number of temporary foreign workers who could be admitted under the program at any one time.

A Washington dispatch on Aug. 7 about United States legal efforts to restrict Japanese killing of sperm whales incorrectly described Japan's response to an International Whaling Commission moratorium on sperm whaling.

A little-known group has taken responsibility for kidnapping a daughter of President Jose Napoleon Duarte of El Salvador, according to two Government officials involved in the case. A man who said he represented the Pedro Pablo Castillo Front telephoned Government officials on Friday and Saturday to say the group was holding Mr. Duarte's eldest daughter, Ines Guadalupe Duarte Duran, the officials said. The group also sent President Duarte a tape recording of Miss Duarte to prove that she was alive, one of the officials added. The caller, the official said, made two demands: a halt to all Government military operations to facilitate negotiations over the kidnapping and the release of as many as 12 imprisoned rebels from various factions.

A secretary in Chancellor Helmut Kohl's office was reported today to have defected to East Germany with her husband, a senior official in a foundation close to one of West Germany's governing parties. Both are suspected of spying. The defection by the couple, Herbert Adolf Willner and Herta-Astrid Willner, was the latest in a chain of disappearances that has disclosed widespread penetration of Bonn's power centers by Communist agents. Since the beginning of August, a senior counterespionage officer, two secretaries and an army messenger have vanished. All are believed to be in East Berlin. In addition, a secretary in the office of President Richard von Weizsacker has been arrested on suspicion of having been a spy for 18 years.

President Reagan tonight ruled out negotiations with the Soviet Union on the development and testing of his proposed missile defense in space in exchange for deep cuts in the Soviet nuclear arsenal. At the same time Mr. Reagan, in a nationally televised news conference, expressed hope that his meeting in November with Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, would ''lead to a change in the relationship'' between the United States and the Soviet Union. Responding to several questions about the meeting in Geneva, Mr. Reagan made it plain that although his strategic defense initiative would not be a ''bargaining chip'' in the immediate future, he did not exclude a trade-off once research into the space program was completed. 'Room for Negotiation' ''There's a great deal of room for negotiation,'' Mr. Reagan said.

It's a Saturday in Soweto and conflict seems inevitable. The word has spread among teen-agers who call each other ''comrade'' - and who do not tolerate those who reject the label - that there is to be a funeral rally, across town, in Avalon cemetery. Cars and minibuses are hijacked, and scores of white troops armed with automatic rifles take up positions along the route. At the cemetery gates, a blue-painted bus drives by, packed with ''comrades.'' A white soldier whips rifle to shoulder in the firing position, instinctive and menacing as the mock charge of an elephant.

A leading French newspaper reported today that the sinking of the anti-nuclear protest vessel Rainbow Warrior was the work of French military divers, and that the Defense Minister apparently had approved the operation. The newspaper, Le Monde, quoting what it said were sources in the French secret service as well as Government officials and others, said this information was subsequently concealed from an inquiry ordered by President Francois Mitterrand. The Defense Minister, Charles Hernu, rejected the report in Le Monde tonight as part of ''the campaign of rumors and insinuations being waged against French military officials over the attack on the Rainbow Warrior.'' Man Killed in Sinking One man was killed when the vessel, the flagship of the environmentalist group Greenpeace, was sunk July 10 by explosives while berthed in Auckland, New Zealand. The ship was going to lead a protest flotilla to the French nuclear testing site at Mururoa Atoll. New Zealand police investigators concluded that mines had been attached to the Rainbow Warrior's hull.

Peter Shapiro, the Democratic candidate for governor, stood on the steps of the State House in Trenton the other day and promised, if elected, to give New Jersey homeowners a 15 percent reduction in their property taxes with ''no ifs, ands or buts, no fine print and no gimmicks.'' The promise might be dismissed as campaign oratory were it not for the record of Mr. Shapiro's seven years as Essex County Executive. During that period, he has trimmed the county payroll from 8,262 employees, when he took office in 1978, to 6,447 at the end of last month, largely through attrition; consolidated the government from 69 agencies into 8 departments, and dropped the county tax rate from $1.45 per $100 of assessed valuation - the highest in the state - to $1.08, a rate that ranks the county fourth in the state. He also has gone outside the traditional government bureaucracy to contract with community organizations for special services. In the Essex, community groups operate a program for juvenile offenders that has sharply reduced the number of repeat offenders, and other groups provide recreational programs in the county's park system.

''With the state of emergency in effect, and violence and repression affecting the lives of so many South Africans, we believe the South African Government must be held publicly accountable for its actions.'' - Sondra McCarty, a State Department spokesman. [A11:1.]

International President Reagan ruled out talks with the Kremlin on the development and testing of his proposed missile defense in space in exchange for deep cuts in the Soviet nuclear arsenal. Mr. Reagan spoke in a televised news conference. [Page A1, Column 6.] A secretary in Helmut Kohl's office was said to have defected to East Germany with her husband, a senior official in a foundation close to one of Bonn's governing parties. The couple, Herbert and Herta-Astrid Willner, are suspected of spying. [A1:1-2.]