I spent last Friday night indulging in one of my all-time favorite activities: curling up on the couch alone in a warm, dark apartment, eating takeout, and watching bad TV. It's like being in the womb, except with better snacks. There I was with a steaming bowl of Pad Thai and a bottle of Rioja, contemplating my choice between Who Is Clark Rockefeller? and reruns of Designing Women. The night was off to a promising start.
While scrolling through the channels, I came across Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution and thought I would give it a look-see.
The show’s premise: Jamie Oliver, of Naked Chef fame, travels to the outrageously obese town of Huntington, West Virginia, hell-bent on getting processed foods out of school cafeterias and teaching local families about proper nutrition.
Let me be clear: the whole thing is mortifying.
In a country chockablock with celebrity chefs, it's a foreigner who has managed to launch a massive national health campaign complete with prime time network TV coverage. Like Angelina Jolie decamping in Darfur or Wyclef Jean pulling babies out of the rubble in Haiti, America’s fatness has gotten to the point where it's the subject of international celebrity philanthropy. And Jamie Oliver is our Sally Struthers.
That he's English only adds insult to injury. The last time the Brits took part in a revolution in the US it didn't go so well for them, but it's 2010 and now we're taking nutritional advice from the people who brought the world "mushy peas," baked beans on toast, Marmite, and Branston Pickle.
But we're the people who market peanut butter in squeeze tubes as a snack, so hey, I guess we're not in a position to argue.
I can get past the idea of having our food systems reformed by an English guy, but watching my country's appalling eating habits immortilized on film is just beyond embarassing. I hope that this show never gets aired in Europe, or all the progress that Obama has made in convincing the rest of the Western world that we're really not so bad after all will be undone with the image of a 200-pound fourth grader eating Twinkies for breakfast.
Midway through the episode I saw, Jamie cruises around an elementary school lunchroom and examines what the kiddies have brought to eat from home. Among his findings are radioactive green fruit chews, some sort of Windex-hued jello, and bright pink flavored milk. These are colors that belong on an Italian teenager, not on a lunch tray. And the effects of this diet are nothing if not clear; in Huntington, the children are Santa-shaped, and the adults look like walruses.
It may have been the Rioja talking, but as I kept watching, Jamie and his winsome cockney inflection began to grow on me. I think that the folks in Huntington like him too. He sounds like the GEICO gecko as he finger-wags at teen moms, imparting such non-nonsense advice for reading food labels as “If it sounds like a NASA science lesson, don’t buy it; if it sounds like stuff you’d find in your nan’s pantry, then do.”
I still wish that the Marios and Emerils among us had gotten their heads out of their asses to do what Jamie came cross the pond for. But, he actually seems to be making some serious headway on school lunch reform, an issue about which much is said and little is done, so I'm inclined to support his efforts. If you are too, signing this petition is a good start:
http://www.jamieoliver.com/campaigns/jamies-food-revolution/petition
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