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4/9/10

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

I have recently been tuning in on Friday nights (which means it is on tonight...yay!) to Jamie Oliver's Foo d Revolution. Basically the premise of the show is that Jamie Oliver picked the unhealthiest city in America, Huntington, WV, and he is on a mission to reform the resident's eating habits. He's starting with the school food that is served in the elementary and (last week) the high schools in the area, and trying to change the meals that are served and the attitudes that the students have. As someone who truly believes in home made, fresh, healthy food, it appalls me to see the kinds of things that are being served in the cafeterias, and the attitudes of the adults that are in charge of these food programs. In one episode, the head of the food system for the schools talked about "having to serve kids what they want" and that if they didn't like Jamie's homecooked vegetable pasta than it wouldn't work, and they would go back to chicken nuggets and french fries. Now, I don't have children, so I guess perhaps my attitude will change once I do (although I can only see myself getting more into healthy food, not really less) but I am flabbergasted by the idea that 6 and 7 years should be given the choice of whatever they want to eat at lunch, and they can choose fried food with french fries as their vegetable. From my perspective, this is an opportunity to teach children, and children only know what they are exposed to. If all you ever serve them is McDonalds, well of course they are going to like it, it is all they know. On the other hand, if you expose them to a wide variety of vegetables, fruit, meats, etc. they are able to learn to like different foods.
With obesity being as big of a problem as it is in the United States, I cannot imagine why anyone would not see the wisdom in teaching our children healthier eating habits. Many children are eating two meals a day at school, so even if they went home and all their parents served them was fast food, they would still get some nutrition and exposure at the school. In relation to total per capita income, Americans spend less on food than any other developed country (see this article for more information about that). However, from my perspective we are just delaying the costs and putting it towards something else, namely health care. We don't want to spend the money to put healthy, nutritionous food on our tables and in our cafeterias, and yet we end up spending the money to combat all of the "western diseases" that result from eating so many processed foods, having such a skewed omega 3/omega 6 ration, etc.

So now I'm off my soapbox of how much it bothers me to see young children eating so poorly. :) the show is really entertaining, even if you aren't as much into the food industry and changes in the attitudes towards food as I am. Jamie Oliver seems like a really great guy with good intentions, so I am excited to see what kind, if any, of changes he is able to implement into Huntington.

For more information about Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, go to his homepage and read more about his campaign here.
I'm reading this: Jamie Oliver's Food RevolutionTweet this! Posted by Lauren on Friday, April 09, 2010

1 comment:

  1. AnonymousApril 11, 2010 at 6:15 PM

    This is my new addiction too! I love Jamie Oliver & think it's impressive that he's taking on such a tough challenge!

    ReplyDelete

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