{"id":3837,"date":"2010-03-27T13:14:34","date_gmt":"2010-03-27T18:14:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=3837"},"modified":"2016-08-14T13:48:16","modified_gmt":"2016-08-14T18:48:16","slug":"on-jamie-olivers-food-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2010\/03\/27\/on-jamie-olivers-food-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"On Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/span> admit, although I’d heard of Jamie Oliver before yesterday, I had only the vaguest idea who he was. A friend of mine cooked up some of his recipes for a dinner party once, and I was impressed. But I’d heard he called feeding your kids junk food child abuse, and I was not impressed. So it was simple curiousity coupled with a lack of anything more compelling to do that made me tune in to his new TV show last night.<\/p>\n

In case you, like me, have been under a rock for the last half decade or so, here’s the backgrounder: Jamie Oliver is an admittedly fetching British chef who seems to star in most of the shows on the Food Network. He’s a one-man empire<\/a>: beyond the multiple TV shows, he’s got a product line with in-home parties, books, cafes and cooking schools, and a couple of restaurants. He’s taken on the cause of leading a movement <\/a>in healthy eating and wholesome cooking, especially for school children, and turned it into a six-episode TV series. In Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution<\/a>, he takes his message to Huntington, West Virginia — the “unhealthiest city in America” — where he helps families and a school cafeteria learn how to eschew the ubiquitous chicken nuggets and pizza for simple, unprocessed and nutritional meals made of real food.<\/p>\n

Which brings us to last night’s show. In fact, there were two — I made it through one and a half before I ran out of steam and PVRed the rest.<\/p>\n

I went in cynical. I’d bristled at the attribution I’d read, where he said feeding your kids junk food is equivalent to child abuse. I am very cognizant of what my kids eat, and feed them healthy, wholesome, home-cooked meals most of the time. But you know what? They also get McDonalds and pizza and (gasp!) chips, and a lot of the other crap kids love. Occasionally<\/em>. And I’m fine with that.<\/p>\n

But by half way through the first episode last night, I was hooked. This is not the “Wife Swap” brand of exploitative reality television that I was expecting. He seems genuine in his belief that by empowering one family, one school, and by extension one small city, he can sow the seeds of real change in how America eats. Not only do I think he is genuine in his belief, but I think he may just achieve what he’s set out to do.<\/p>\n

Of course, in me he is preaching to the choir. I look back over the last ten years and am amazed at how my outlook on food has changed since we had kids. Even over the last year and a half, I’ve radically changed how I choose and prepare dinners. In fact, I’ve more or less taught myself how to cook real food from scratch, something I rarely did before we had kids. Turns out that convenience foods are neither the best nor the easiest choice — didn’t see that one coming! <\/p>\n

For instance, I’ve gone from buying frozen chicken nuggets in a box to making my own with shake and bake to making my own with bread crumbs and buttermilk. And you know what really surprised me? It takes only a few minutes longer, but it tastes so much better! I make hamburgers from ground beef instead of buying boxes of frozen patties. I serve a fruit or a vegetable to the boys with every single meal. I found out the boys love certain types of salad, so we serve those often. Simple things that we weren’t doing just two years ago. Small things, but important things that are cutting out heaping helpings of preservatives and sodium and mystery ingredients.<\/p>\n

This is in pretty sharp contrast with the obviously overweight family that Jamie took under his wing in last night’s episode. They had stacks of frozen pizzas in the fridge for snacks, and their deep fryer was the most-used appliance in their kitchen. When Jamie cooked up an entire week’s worth of their food — largely pizza and pogos and fries — it was alarming not only in its quantity but in its uniform golden brown colour.<\/p>\n

Even more disturbing was the school cafeteria that served pizza for breakfast, fried food at every meal and neon-coloured milk. I have a hell of a time making sure three kids eat properly at lunch time each day, so it can’t be easy to manage 400 of them, but I’m still trying to figure out if it was the sheer wasted food or what they were eating that was more disturbing to watch. (Much was made of the six-year-olds who confused potatoes and tomatoes, but even my kids who have grown tomatoes in the garden and eat them regularly occasionally confuse the similar-sounding words.)<\/p>\n

Overall, I think some of the conflict in the show was gently contrived, but they generally stayed away from overt exploitation or holier-than-thou mocking of the residents of Huntington. There’s little arguing with his message, far as I’m concerned, and I wish him every success in evangelizing it. <\/p>\n

Did you watch it? What did you think? Is this just another way for Jamie Oliver to line his own pockets, or might he really achieve his noble goals? And if this isn’t the way to wean the populace from pogos and chicken nuggets — what is?<\/p>\n

Edited to add: <\/strong> I should have thought when I was writing this to link to the newly launched “Know More Do More<\/a>” campaign in Ottawa. Check them out for healthy active living tips for families!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I admit, although I’d heard of Jamie Oliver before yesterday, I had only the vaguest idea who he was. A friend of mine cooked up some of his recipes for a dinner party once, and I was impressed. But I’d heard he called feeding your kids junk food child abuse, and I was not impressed. … Continue reading “On Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109,17,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-happy-home","category-life-the-universe-and-everything","category-mothering-without-a-licence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3837"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3844,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3837\/revisions\/3844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}