Chris Higgins
Jamie Oliver on Food, Kids, and Death
by Chris Higgins - March 31, 2010 - 4:34 PM

I recently caught the first few episodes of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution on TV. (British guy doing a cooking thing? Sign me up!) Oliver’s show chronicles his attempt to change the food culture in Huntington, West Virginia — starting in the schools, and also going into the community directly, working with families, teaching people to cook, and so on. Why Huntington? Because the CDC says it has the highest rate of obesity in the US. What happens on the show? Judging from the first few episodes, Oliver is met with anger, resentment, but most of all ignorance about eating habits. Now, I’m not saying this is a problem specific to Huntington — I’ve been to Huntington (my family is from West Virginia) and it’s an American city like any other. But it’s honestly appalling to see Oliver quiz kids on what various foods are (like tomatoes and potatoes — he shows them to a classroom and asks “Does anyone know what this is?”) and discover that the kids have no idea what “real food” is.

In this TED Talk, Oliver talks about his work on educating people about food. He discusses his work in England (most notably on school lunch programs), and presents a series of alarming statistics and real-world examples of people dying from diet-related diseases. Because Oliver’s wheelhouse is school food programs, he spends a lot of time talking about that stuff — and it’s amazingly bad. “Pizza for breakfast, anyone?”

Representative quote: “Diet-related disease is the biggest killer in the US right now, here, today.” And it’s preventable. This talk is smart, simple, and very alarming.

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Comments (15)

  1. On a related note, the students in the UK that changed their diets seem to be doing better on test scores and whatnot: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/mar/29/jamie-oliver-school-dinners-meals

    posted by Shane Kretky on 3-31-2010 at 5:06 pm

  2. Actually according to the Center For Disease Control, Tobacco use is the number one cause of preventable death in the United States. Followed closely by High Blood pressure and then Obesity.

    posted by Megan on 3-31-2010 at 6:14 pm

  3. Actually, according to the centers for Disease Control the leading cause of preventable death is Tobacco use. But Obesity is not far behind.

    posted by megan on 3-31-2010 at 6:16 pm

  4. I am so glad that you posted this!! I’m a teacher, and am all about the food revolution. More people need to know about what Jamie is doing and get involved in our childrens’ nutrition!

    Here’s a link to his website:
    http://www.jamieoliver.com/campaigns/jamies-food-revolution

    posted by KerriD on 3-31-2010 at 6:22 pm

  5. I agree completely with what Jamie is doing; its def. something that needs to happen. That said, the guy comes off as pretty rude. Kind of pretenious and all up in his own ass.

    posted by mc on 3-31-2010 at 7:34 pm

  6. i love ramsays kitchen nightmares. you can catch the uk version on youtube. i havent eaten out since seeing the first episode. my question is where are the health inspectors ? they are either blind or on the take. i have never seen such disgusting filth. the local authorities should hunt down the health inspectors that allowed such conditions and fire them and prosecute them. bonus the uk version is not bleeped. thank you chef ramsay. i will never eat in a restaurant again. cheers.

    posted by dirk alan on 3-31-2010 at 9:25 pm

  7. First of all, Jamie didn’t \shoe\ them: \like tomatos and potatoes — he shoes them to a classroom and asks “Does anyone know what this is?” Um….don’t think he’s a cobbler. As for \tomato\, I’ll let that be.

    Anyway, love his show and what he’s trying to accomplish here in the states. Unfortunately, he’s not ‘relating’ to America due to his brusque nature. I get it, I love directness as opposed to polite \P.C.\ bullship discourse. We’ve become a far too sensitive culture to offensiveness. Ferchrissake, let’s call a spade a spade! We are obese. It is because of the crap chemicals and additives in our food. It is because of the abundance and affordability of fast food and junk food. It is because we are too lazy to cook for ourselves from scratch anymore (hey, the crockpot – a marvelous invention – use it!)
    It is because we’ve forgotton the lost art of homemaking because it has become a negative term in today’s society.

    Welcome your result.

    posted by Brenda on 4-1-2010 at 1:04 am

  8. I agree MC, but it’s hard to listen to some one who doesn’t strongly believe in themselves. He does come off as pretentious, but he has every right to be.

    posted by blah on 4-1-2010 at 1:22 am

  9. As a Huntington resident, I just want to remind everyone to remember that Jamie’s show is a “reality” show, and just like with any other reality series, the so-called “reality” will be blown out of proportion. The problems here are indeed real and serious, but the people especially are exaggerated on the show. The show has a production staff that wants a certain “feel” just like Survivor, the Biggest Loser, etc., so they won’t and didn’t hesitate to manipulate the representation of reality here, as well. They can and did ask people to play the role of the villains or the ignorant, so don’t let one television show be solely responsible for your thoughts of a city, area, state, or people.

    I sincerely hope this can trigger benefits across the country, because so far it’s doing us Huntingtonians much harm as it has good. We have gained the reputation of being fat idiots in a state already seen as a bunch of in-bred hillbillies when we’re nothing more than a city that has a stronger presence of a nationwide problem of obesity.

    posted by Sam on 4-1-2010 at 2:05 am

  10. The problem (apart from people just being too lazy) is that very few people are actually taught about food. Generally, we inherit our eating habits from our parents and from our peers.

    Slowly, over the years, as work increases and we have much more interesting things to do with our free time, the time we spend on things like eating and cooking diminishes. It becomes VERY easy to call for a pizza or grab a burger on the way home from the office.

    What we need is a standard issue recipe book that contains 7 healthy lunches and 7 healthy dinners that are easy, fast and cheap to cook. These 14 meals could be taught in schools so that everyone has the knowledge they need to eat well.

    After that, you’ve only yourself to blame.

    posted by Andy Cairns on 4-1-2010 at 10:48 am

  11. Brenda — thanks for the typo corrections!

    Sam — I agree, the TV show is definitely Reality TV at its manipulative finest. At least there’s some meaningful content (healthy eating) at the heart of the thing.

    posted by Chris Higgins on 4-1-2010 at 12:30 pm

  12. Not saying that school food is by any means good for kids, or that cheap is more important than healthy. BUT schools have to make meals that can be sold for about $1.25, and a lot of public school students receive free or reduced-price lunch. How healthy, appealing and filling can a meal be for a buck-25? Challenge the policy makers, not the lunch ladies who show up and cook the food for an hourly wage.

    posted by Erin on 4-1-2010 at 2:36 pm

  13. Erin — your point is well taken and is addressed at length in Oliver’s TV show, as well as in the video above. He goes out of his way to explain that the people implementing the policy are doing their best, but that the government’s food policy stinks. There are specific USDA guidelines for how the meals must be prepared, and budgets are slim. So it makes sense that the meals kids get are going to be pretty crappy. But the point is certainly not to blame lunch ladies, the point is to raise the issue in the public square so that citizens realize it’s a problem and go to their elected officials to make a change.

    Interestingly, a minor form of school lunch reform was included in the recent health care bill. Apparently it doesn’t change much though, as noted in this article:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-richardson/lousy-school-lunch-bill-o_b_513624.html

    For what it’s worth, according to the article, the current per-meal cost is $2.68. The health care bill proposes an increase of six cents.

    posted by Chris Higgins on 4-1-2010 at 3:05 pm

  14. Does anybody remember “Shaq’s Big Challenge” from a couple years ago? Shaquille O’Neal did the same sort of thing in the Orlando, FL area. He challenged several obese and inactive kids to become more active, lose weight and eat better. He also challenged the school system to add P.E. back into the curriculum and brought in Tyler Florence to try to renovate school lunches. It was a very interesting show, I would love to know how these kids are doing now and find out if the schools implemented any of their ideas.

    It was sad to see these pre-teens eating pizza after pizza, sitting around playing video games all day and being made fun of at school. And it was inspiring to see them achieve their goals. For some of them, just running a couple laps around the track was a big undertaking.

    I hope Oliver is successful and that more people realize that change needs to happen soon. I am starting my daughter early on learning that vegetables are GOOD and playing outside is more fun than any TV show. She’s only 15 months old, but she loves her veggies and can’t get enough of being outside, walking and playing. We will work hard to make sure that continues.

    posted by Jenny on 4-1-2010 at 3:32 pm

  15. There is one word that springs to mind when I watched this series from my New Zealand couch: “ignorant”. How Jamie Oliver held his composure when faced with so many rude, closed and ignorant people located-in one place, is beyond me. Here he is giving-up his time to help these people extend their own life-spans and help a generation of their children, and to be treated in this way is appalling. This is a city where Kids didn’t even know how to use a fork or what a potato or a tomato looks like! In the end the actual healthy-eating ethos was a sideline to what we were seeing on our screens – a truly sad indictment into myopic American society. Fancy feeding pizza to Kids for breakfast – I ask you – what sort of country can mandate this into law as being healthy? It’s tragic. Oliver is patently wasting his time and his charity is better spent in places where the locals are at least open to change.
    Have a great day.
    Paul.

    posted by Paul on 10-26-2010 at 4:52 pm

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