
Photo courtesy of ABC
For those of you hiding under a rock, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution is here! You may know him from his Food Network show, The Naked Chef, but Jamie Oliver is more than just a pretty face – he’s a revolutionary. Jamie began his work in his home country England, instilling programs – Fifteen, School Dinners and Ministry of Food – that are changing the nation’s approach to food. Recently, Jamie has hopped the pond to take on America’s bad eating habits.
His quest is being documented in an ABC series called, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, in which Jamie heads to one of the nations most unhealthy states – Huntington, West Virginia – to take on the town and school system’s approach to food. This show is saddening, disgusting, frustrating, heartwarming and hopeful, all wrapped together. I was particularly mortified, when in episode two Jamie demonstrates to a group of elementary schoolers where their chicken nuggets come from.
In his demonstration, Jamie takes a chicken, cuts all of the good bits of meat, then sticks the remainder of the carcass in a blender, but doesn’t start it up before adding a “load of chicken skin.”
“Some of the processed foods you love are made from the bits you don’t like,” Jamie explains to the children. But the demonstration isn’t over yet, he puts the, now, chicken paste into a bowl and pours in all the flavorings you now need to make it taste decent. Then he fries up his very own chicken nugget asking the children, “Now, who would still eat this?” And, opposite from the response of every single group he has demonstrated this to in Britain, all the children raise their hands. The children seem to have a total disconnect between what they have been shown and the tiny, crisp golden morsel they see at the end.
However, Jamie’s cause hasn’t been a total loss. The petition on his website to, “support the Food Revolution,” currently has 395,645 signatures and is growing daily. And recently, Jamie became TED 2010 prizewinner. His talk outlines his food revolution in which he pinpoints education about food in schools and at home as the key to changing the most overweight country in the world.
While I want to believe a food revolution is possible – I have signed the petition, watched the show and the talks – at the end of the day, all those kids raised their hands. Is this revolution strong enough to take on a fast food nation?
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