I just watched the first episode of Jamie Oliver's new reality show on ABC, "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution". For those of you who have missed either the show or the ads here's the breakdown. Famous British chef comes to America's unhealthiest city to change the way that school children eat. Hilarity ensues. The show has gotten mixed reviews from the New York Times and a bad one from the Washington Post. To me the first episode seems reminiscent of a scene from Morgan Spurlock's "Super Size Me".
First a bit of disclosure. I am both a chef and a native of southern West Virginia. Both my brother and sister attended Marshall University. I ate many of those selfsame school lunches through elementary school until Junior High when I began packing my own lunches. Event then I was a little scared of what was going on in those kitchens. In fact, one of the scenes from Super Size Me in which Spurlock goes into a school kitchen took place in my Junior High.
The truth is that school meals are a tremendously important issue in this country. Certainly cost is a factor. It can't be cheap to feed all those kids sometimes twice a day every day. Blanche Lincoln recently introduced a lousy bill to give more money to schools but it falls short of the President's goals and far short of the First Lady's Let's Move initiative. Lincoln's bill doesn't add much money to the funds reimbursed to schools for their meal programs. In addition, the money comes out of conservation programs because it has to come from somewhere. A content rich website offers the particulars of the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act of 2009.
Will this television show do anything to change the debate about school lunches in this country? By itself it is doubtful to have any real and lasting effect. But it is possible that it could be another brick in the foundation of change. Witness the anonymous blog of a real live lunch lady who is bravely eating all of the lunches served up in her school. The School Nutrition Association offers up several suggestions to increase the nutrition of school lunches.
The following is an excerpt in which Oliver discusses the school's offerings for breakfast that day.
In the wake of the recent debate over Health Care that has taken place in this country it is my hope that we can begin addressing the amount of money spent on obesity related health concerns such as Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and many others. While I realize that there are other items on the political agenda that will come to the fore in the push towards the November election, I hope that this issue may get some more play. I am enough of a realist to know that obesity and school lunches will be a back burner issue for some time to come.
Of course there is also the issue of dealing with conservatives on this issue. One of the most brilliant decisions made by the producers of this show was to set it in rural red state West Virginia. This is Tea Party, gun totin, red meat America we're talking about here. This part of the country already thinks that the Democrat vision of healthcare is a Socialist intrusion on their rights. They are not likely to respond to Democratic legislation any better than they do to Jamie Oliver.
Anyway, on to the positive. Here is a clip of Michelle Obama introducing her Let's Move Campaign last month.
And there's also the NFL'S Play60 initiative.
And, finally, a little Adam Sandler.