Friday, May 7, 2010

Notes on the Food Revolution


Lately my mind has been on the perpetuation or should I say perpetration of an unhealthy diet and lifestyle on the children of America by the public school system. I’ve been watching Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution on TV. For those who don’t know, Jamie Oliver is the bloke from Essex who starred in the British TV show The Naked Chef and who has now made it his mission to bring healthy eating to America’s school children. His Food Revolution was filmed in Huntington, West Virginia, reportedly the unhealthiest city in America (although, as you’ll see on the show, there are those who resent that label.)
Jamie begins by starting with a single school and campaigns to bring in fresh food, cooked on the premises every day that contain fruits, vegetables, and good quality protein. In addition, he is trying to decrease the amount of fried food, processed food and sugar offered to the students. These are relatively simple and modest goals, and you would think most people would easily see that these are valuable goals. I mean, he’s not even suggesting the food be organic (which would offer more vitamins and minerals per pound of food, but would be more expensive.) One of the remarkable aspects of the program is how difficult it is to achieve these very simple and admirable goals. Another remarkable aspect of the program is that when given a choice, the students choose Jamie’s food over the usual non-nutritious fare. The parents are often more of an obstacle than the children.
Huntington got its unhealthy reputation by 1) being located in West Virginia which has the most per capita obese citizens in the nation and 2) by having the most per capita obese citizens in the state. These statistics vary from year to year, so it is not always West Virginia in the lead; but those states that have a large percentage of the population suffering from obesity also have a large percentage of the population suffering from diabetes, heart disease, and a host of other diseases. Jamie has some very poignant interviews with some of the people of Huntington who have been quite negatively affected by obesity, either their own or that of someone they love.
Another place where you can learn about Jamie’s Food Revolution is on his website www.jamieoliver.com where you can join over half a million Americans in signing a petition that states:
I support the Food Revolution. America's kids need better food at school and better health prospects. We need to keep cooking skills alive.
The petition is mainly to make a point to President and First Lady Obama that this is an issue that Americans really do care about.
The website has tons of recipes, how to videos and advice for starting a food revolution in your own community. There’s lots of fun stuff for kids—recipes and videos just for them, for example. You see, one of Jamie’s very salient points is that many of the children living in the U.S. today are the third generation of non-cooking Americans. In other words, they have been raised on processed food, fast food, food that contains little to no nutrition, but a great many calories. Nobody in the family actually cooks, and consequently kids grow up not learning how to cook.
If you don’t have time to watch a full episode at http://abc.go.com/shows/jamie-olivers-food-revolution
you also have the option of watching Jamie do his TED talk at http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jamie_oliver.html which is also quite good. One of the most amazing things Jamie shows is a group of children who cannot identify (pardon the pun)garden variety vegetables. If they don't know what it is, do we really think they're gonna eat it?
If you don’t know by now we ARE what we eat, we ARE what we drink, we ARE what we breathe and we ARE what we do for ourselves. And as Jamie points out, most of the diseases that kill us are diet related and completely preventable. We should make an effort to spare our children. At the very least we should sign Jamie’s petition. And we should tell our friends to sign Jamie's petition.