Friday, March 26, 2010

Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution

So I'm watching Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution on ABC, and the longer I watch it, the angrier and more disgusted I'm getting.

Let me ask the parents out there a question:

Say a chef came to your kids' school and said he wanted to change your kids' school dinners so they'd stop eating high-fat, unhealthy processed crap and start eating good healthy food. How would you react?

Personally, I'd be happy. Anything that makes your kids healthier is a good thing, right?

Apparently not in Huntington West Virginia, where it appears everyone is dead set against their kids eating anything but fat and preservatives.

Not only are the school dinner ladies and school board throwing every obstacle they can in Jamie's path, the town's local newpaper and radio station are writing stories about how Jamie is doing nothing but badmouthing the town and causing trouble.

Well, you know what, Huntington?…I really think you should be fucking ashamed of yourselves.

What really sold it for me was when Jamie walked into a class full of eight year olds with a table full of vegetables to see what the kids could identify. I could understand some kids not knowing what an egg-plant or a cauliflower looks like… but when not a single kid can identify something as simple as a tomato, potato or an onion in its natural state…something is seriously wrong.

This isn't some over-the-top health nut walking into your school and saying your kids should be vegan and should eat nothing but tofu and green salads… or even that they should never visit McDonalds or KFC…this is just a guy saying that maybe your kids should be eating freshly prepared real food most of the time instead of always eating processed, high-fat crap.

Basically, from what I've seen, none of the staff from this school give a shit about the kids at all. The kitchen staff don't want to actually cook because it's easier to just dump a box of frozen chicken nuggets into a fryer… basically, everyone appears to be thinking 'this is slightly more work, so let's not bother'.

It just cracks me up that every other day there's some news story of the obesity epidemic in America, the massive rise in type-2 diabetes…but when someone comes along and says 'let's do something about it', everyone turns round and gives him a big 'fuck you', because eating healthy is slightly more work.

Personally, Huntington, if I was Jamie Olvier, I'd have left in disgust after the first few days.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

We need a Jamie Oliver in every American town and every school district! It's shocking to see how we allowed our children (and adults) to get brainwashed to the point that they don't know what a green vegetable is! Shame on us! The Nobel prize should go to Jamie Oliver for his efforts to lengthen and save lives. Our own celebrities go to Africa to save people from hunger, they should start with our own backyard and save people from bad food.

Unknown said...

we need jamie holden mo. i have ate at school i know what the children are eating we do need to do something i linda

Anonymous said...

THANK YOU!!!!!!

I have just been voicing the exact same opinions. Those dinner ladies were bitches and the whole system is a mess. Pizza for breakfast indeed! What a fucking joke!

Woman atop her Soapbox said...

This is why I'm glad my mom had a vegetable garden when we were young (not a big garden but just a few plants).

And my school had a salad bar.. of all things!

Jamie is right on the money.

~WAHS