Rumors Of The Food Revolution's Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated

Jamie Oliver illustrates his point about the amount of sugar added to school lunches.

Some of you may have tuned in to watch the third episode of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution only to be faced with a recap of Dancing With Some People. Perhaps your first instinct, like mine, was to think, "Oh $*#!, they finally got him. He's off the air. The Food Revolution is no more. The terrorists have won." No? Just me? Hmm.

Well, fortunately for us cynics, foodies, nutritionally challenged, reality show buffs, or concerned parents, Jamie Oliver is just not that easy to get rid of. Several factors collided to put a break in the contiguous run of the show, but like Arnold Schwarzenegger's bad press, it will be back. ABC executives did pull the show for May sweeps, ostensibly because people would rather watch the Karate Kid get voted off the island than tune in to see which stuffed shirt Oliver can calmly antagonize into near stroke-inducing levels of evasion next. The majority of the press you'll find about the show's "cancellation" seems to be motivated primarily by a counter-movement attempting to discredit the popularity of Oliver's campaign in Los Angeles. Now who could possibly be behind that?

In actuality, show's filming was interrupted not only for viewership reasons, but also by a bit of unanticipated success. In response to pressure following the first two episodes of the season, L.A. Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy publicly agreed to remove flavored milks from the school menus. The rumor mill has it that several episodes are being re-shot to include some of the campaign's recent successes. 

Meanwhile, the Food Revolution has not ceased its public outreach endeavors. During the filming hiatus, Oliver's team is operating a mobile cooking school out of a 70-foot semi (or big rig, or tractor-trailer-truck, depending what part of the country you're from). During all this, the Food Revolution petition to improve the quality and nutritional value of school lunches has gained upwards of 600,000 signatures, well on the way to reaching the goal of 1 million signatures by the end of this season.

Season 2 of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution will return at the end of the month to ABC, which is re-airing the first two episodes back-to-back on May 27th, with new episodes slated to begin on Friday, June 3. You can also view episodes of season 2 on HULU or ABC.com.  If you missed season 1, we've compiled it here. Happy viewing and healthy eating!

Click here to see all posts on Jamie Oliver

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Feast or Famine - Part 2: Jamie Takes Hollywood

UPDATE (5/25/11): Season 2 of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution will return to ABC at the end of May. CLICK HERE to see all related posts.

We may have our issues with some of ABC's programming decisions (*cough* Made In America *cough*) but if there's one thing they're getting right, it's Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, which is currently airing in its second season.

If you missed the first season of the show, then you didn't see the frankly shocking results of Jamie's campaign to examine the quality of the food available to public school children in Huntington, VA - or the unbelievable amount of resistance he skillfully navigated while trying to educate the town's people on the nutritional value (or lack thereof) of highly processed, low quality ingredients.

Now in the second season Jamie has taken the campaign to Los Angeles, and if Huntington was resistant to his message, then Los Angeles is downright hostile. The first thing the L.A. Unified School District did was ban Oliver from every single one of its schools. The critical mistake in their reaction was failure to consider the fact that if Oliver is a good chef, he is a brilliant activist. He moved his family to L.A. for the run of the show, so I expect his next move will be to enroll his kids in L.A. Unified. They can refuse access to a food critic, but they can't keep out a parent. On the other hand, considering what Oliver has seen, he may just want to keep his kids away from L.A.'s public school system altogether. Lord knows I would.

Watch the drama unfold in Season 2 of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution on ABC, Tuesday nights at 8/7 Central, or anytime on your computer via Hulu.

More links about the Food Revolution:

LAUSD launches new menu, denies Oliver's campaign had anything to do with its creation. 

TIME tv critic shares viewers concerns about the show's structure, and their desire to stay tuned in anyway.

Roughly 80% of L.A. Times readers polled feel that LAUSD made a massive miscalculation in working against Oliver, rather than with him. 

Learn more about the Jamie Oliver Foundation and what it's doing to keep you and your kids healthy.

More than you ever wanted to know about Ryan Seacrest (who produces Oliver's show, along with the entire Kardiashian franchise and several other "reality" shows).

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Feast or Famine - Part 1: Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

UPDATE (5/25/11): Season 2 of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution will return to ABC at the end of May. CLICK HERE to see all related posts.


So far on this blog we've dealt with heavy topics like the death of independent media, institutionalized racism in the criminal justice system, and Charlie Sheen. Today I want to take a look at a topic that is slightly more accessible to most of us ... food. Yummy, delicious, slurp it down, gobble it up, eat your heart out food.


Of course, when we say "eat your heart out," we in the U. S. sometimes approach the term just a bit too literally. We are blessed to live in a nation of plenty, but our society seems to approach food with an almost literal "feast or famine" mindset. 1 out of every 8 Americans now rely upon some form of assistance (food bank or "soup kitchen") in order to have enough food to eat. If you're doing the math, that's over 37 million people - 14 million of whom are children.  Yet at the same time, our nation has the highest rate of obesity in the entire world. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over 75 million adults (roughly 30%) and an average of 19% of male children and 16% of female children in the U. S. are morbidly obese.


Indeed, the CDC now considers obesity to be a major epidemic and one of the top ten costliest medical conditions we face as a nation:

Over the past decade, obesity has become recognized as a national health threat and a major public health challenge. In 2007--2008, based on measured weights and heights (1), approximately 72.5 million adults in the United States were obese (CDC, unpublished data, 2010). Obese adults are at increased risk for many serious health conditions, including coronary heart disease, hypertension, stroke, type 2 diabetes, certain types of cancer, and premature death (2,3). Adult obesity also is associated with reduced quality of life, social stigmatization, and discrimination (2,3). From 1987 to 2001, diseases associated with obesity accounted for 27% of the increases in U.S. medical costs (4). For 2006, medical costs associated with obesity were estimated at as much as $147 billion (2008 dollars); among all payers, obese persons had estimated medical costs that were $1,429 higher than persons of normal weight (5). 

Eat your heart out indeed.

So what could be behind this feast or famine, all or nothing approach to food we seem to have adopted as a nation? Probably the same kind of large-scale, insidious manipulation that lies behind any subconscious, institutionalized way of thinking; someone, somewhere, is getting something major out of it. In this case, that something is probably boatloads of cash. I'm talking about people you and I will never meet who are making the kind of money you and I will never see. And they're making it off of us. The question is who? Who would actively (if subtly and insidiously) promote this institutionalized, victual feast or famine mindset? Could it be the multi-billion dollar fast food industry? The multi-billion dollar processed food industry? Hmmm... More on that in a future post.


First, we're going to take a look at just how deeply ingrained our food notions really are (and how early in life we are programmed to start making those choices), and internationally renowned chef Jamie Oliver is going to help us. Oliver is a British chef whose approach to using fresh, unprocessed ingredients literally revolutionized the English school cafeteria system. Following his success in England, Oliver decided to take on the American school lunch industry in his reality show Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, for which he won both an Emmy and a TED prize. Season 1 is posted below, and believe me it's worth every click.


How much resistance would you expect a world renowned chef to meet when he comes into a town in the heart of the U.S. with the message, "Hey, what if we feed our kids less processed chemicals and fat, and more fresh, healthy food?"


See for yourself.

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution - Episode 1

Part 1

 

Part 2

  

Part 3

Part 4

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Episode 2

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Episode 3

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

 Part 4

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Episode 4

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Episode 5

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Episode 6

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

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