Food Revolution

Mar
30

British chef Jamie Oliver is on a mission to inform people about how our eating habits are killing us. He’s made quite an impression in England, including convincing the British government to add $1 billion to their school lunch program to transform it from processed foods to real foods.

Now he’s taking on the US, starting in Huntington, WV which, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), is the unhealthiest city in the US. Jamie is spending 3 months in Huntington to try and transform the way people think about what they eat.

This is not an easy feat. Not only is he up against habit, which is a very hard thing to break in humans, but he’s also up against some big egos. People do not like to be told that what they are doing is wrong, even when the thing they are doing is literally killing them.

The first episode of Jamie Oliver’s Rood Revolution highlights the extreme resistance Jamie receives from the people of Huntington, especially the school cafeteria’s cooks. (At one point Jamie calls them “lunch ladies.” I thought the show might end right then and there because of a lunch lady riot.)

Episode 2 focuses more on our complete and utter ignorance about what we are eating. Two things in this episode made me very very sad for the state of our country.

1) Jamie enters a first grade classroom with a bunch of vegetables and asks the students to identify them. They could not correctly name a single vegetable. Not one single one. Honestly. (Which is exactly why I think food knowledge must be taught in schools.)

Watch for yourself:

2) Jamie runs his “guaranteed no-fail experiment” (which he as run many many times in Britain) to try to make children of Huntington realize that chicken nuggets are gross and they should not eat them. After showing the children what is actually in their chicken nuggets, Jamie then asks the kids, “Who wants one?”

In Britain, the children are all so grossed out about what they just saw go into the nuggets that they groan, “Ewwww!” However, in the US, the kids all immediately pop their hands into the air and respond with an eager, “Me! Me!”

Check out this clip (but be aware that you might lose your own appetite):

This generation of children has been marked as possibly being the first generation in 200 years to have a shorter life expectancy then their parents. The prevalence and severity of obesity is so great, especially in children, that the associated diseases and complications (Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure, cancer) are striking people at younger and younger ages.

The average life expectancy of today’s adults is roughly 77 years, but that is at least 4-9 months shorter than it would be if there were no obesity. Obesity is already shortening average life spans by a greater rate than accidents, homicides, and suicides combined.

Because of obesity, the children of today could wind up living two to five years less than they otherwise would – a negative effect on life span that could be greater than that caused by cancer or coronary heart disease.

We should not only be appaled by what is happening, we should be ashamed. We are literally killing our children with processed food.

Make responsible food choices and demand a change. Our children deserve better.
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Breakfast: Apple and banana
Lunch: Tofurkey sandwich
Dinner: Veggie burger with baked beans and homemade mashed potatoes (with soy milk, olive oil, garlic, and chives)