On “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution”
The set-up: The U.K.’s The Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver, who has worked abroad to change the food system in England, came to the U.S. to work with the people and schools of Huntington, West Virginia, which was named the unhealthiest city in America. “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” is an ABC series that documents his journey. I’d like to begin by stating the obvious: “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” (here‘s the most recent episode) has nothing to do with veganism or animal rights. In fact, last night’s episode included a segment where Chef Oliver took a handful of teenagers from the local high school to a bison farm. The young people saw bisons milling around during the day, and the next scene, with country/western music in the background, was the group sitting around a campfire in the evening eating bisons. If this were Mary Martin’s Food Revolution there would have been a scene in between where the young people spent some time with the bisons, learned a bit about bison family life, and then had to decide if they wanted the bisons to be killed. And if they did, they’d have to learn how to do it and do it themselves.
Though last night’s episode didn’t include that bit, it did include teaching the young people some basics of cooking and we got to hear some of their stories. There was no discussion about where the food came from, and frankly if indeed you are looking for a food revolution, I think it’s dishonest to present the ingredients in your recipes as if they fell from the sky. Perhaps as we get further into the series we’ll see some sourcing of food. I do recall that on his U.K. series he killed a chicken in front of a live audience. We are likely to hear about animals who are happy and then become meals if we go in that direction (here‘s more about Oliver and that).
There’s plenty not to like about this show if you’re a vegan. I didn’t plan to watch it at all but caught up on the Internet and did find a lot of redeeming qualities. It’s easy to be snarky about Oliver and the fact that every dish he has made or talked about so far has animal parts in it. And it would be really easy to express my befuddlement about how last week he did a demonstration for young children with a chicken corpse that basically reinforced the notion that some parts of chickens are food and others aren’t. But if you’re going to eat chickens, I’m not sure why connective tissue shouldn’t be eaten if you like the taste of it (and the point was that connective tissue often comprises chicken nuggets and they tastes good). Oliver was amazed that the kids wanted to eat the nuggets made from everything but the breasts and legs and wings, and I was amazed that he was amazed.
But let’s eke out the redeeming qualities:
- Ah, if only Oliver were a vegan . . . He’s an accessible, diplomatic chameleon. He’s fantastic with people (except one, who has decided up until now at least that she’s not going to like him, and maybe the local doubting DJ, who proclaimed “we like to eat what we like to eat”). He’s like a folksy Michael Pollan with a similar message (though Pollan’s message is “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Oliver would not, it seems, say “mostly plants.” I’d rather see Pollan’s message, assuming a vegan one is impossible.).
- Oliver says he’s “trying to create a culture where the students want to choose the right thing.” The right thing, in this instance, is the fresh, not-processed food. I think that’s a great way of approaching change–don’t impose it, but get the people to understand why they need it and demand it. Of course, the fresh food had animals at the center of the plate, but at some point, like now, I have to stop mentioning that.
- Oliver says that the kids “all have been touched and abused by food.” There’s the diplomacy, because if he talked about the parents’ and the schools’ roles more directly (he does if they bring it up first, and he also does jokingly, but he manages to do it without sounding judgmental), I’m pretty sure he would have gotten an even less-warm reception from some. He draws his point out of a conversation, often leading the other person to state it for him.
- We get to see a real-life example of how even if there is an admission that change is needed, the obstacles of funding, bureaucracy and “nutritional guidelines” are significant within the public school system. It takes more people, more time and more money to cook and serve fresh food. Oliver says “The guidelines are helping killing the kids,” and you can see what he’s referring to when you see the absurd games that are played to satisfy the guidelines and make meals “reimbursable.” I do hope Oliver somehow comes up against the subsidy issue and explains it to the audience.
The most touching part of Oliver’s show is that the young people are the ones who appear to have the deepest understanding of what is happening to them, their families and their community as a result of a reliance on processed food loaded with sugar and fat and salt. They’re suffering emotionally and physically and screaming for help. I hope their parents help them demand that help.
And of course, I hope that help takes the lives of nonhuman parents and children into consideration, by leaving them out of it.
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Photo from JamieOliver.com/tv, and you might not want to look at the other photos, which include one of him holding a piglet, captioned “jamie saves our bacon,” and which is really about saving “pig farmers.”
Stephanie Ernst
Marji
Kelly G.
Deb
Mary Martin
I have been watching his show and do enjoy it. As a vegan, I can certainly see problems when it comes to the issues of eating animal flesh. However, what I do like about the show is that he is getting people to think about food period. Rather than people aimlessly wandering in to get a tray of food, he is challenging people to consider what is on the tray, if it is made from processed foods, has unnatural ingredients, etc. It is certainly far from perfect, but let’s face it – if it was a vegan trying to make the school lunches vegan, he would be having even an rougher time than he is! America seems to hate vegans/vegetarians! I can appreciate his mission, even if I don’t agree with every item being served.
Interesting post!
Mary, thanks for this thoughtful post, which I totally agree with. My girlfriend and I have been watching this show and getting kind of obsessed with it. I’m going to plagiarize my own post on the PPK about it (sorry, it’s kind of long!).
This was a really fascinating show – teaches you a lot about institutional structures, habits, and how a TV show is put together. The guy is actually pretty brilliant – I was mesmerized by the careful thought that went into *not* being an outsider coming in and telling people what to do, and in working with the community. The head-butting with the asshat DJ (Episode 1) was clearly set up as a contrast to the cooperation he did later on. He has identified the most powerful institutions in most any town/small city: the church (Pastor Steve), the school (convincing the nutrition czar to let him even do the thing in the first place), the family, and the medical system, and he’s working with all of them.
The attitude to the lunch ladies was equivocal: the way they had them standing, and the camera’s placement, made them look hostile and scary, but when one lady says, “you shouldn’t be talking to us. You should be talking to our bosses,” you *listen*. Jamie repeatedly says that they are amazing people working hard in a very difficult job; one quote that stayed with me was when he says that if he had someone with Alice’s toughness on his side moving through the school system, he could really make a difference (though this is very utopian). You don’t have to look very hard to see the issue of a big, inflexible institution and some relatively powerless people.
A few people on the PPK posted about the fat kids being shamed. I don’t think they were, but I did feel bad for a lot of the kids, because their parents obviously made the decision for them to be on the show. And Justin (even if he might be justifiably creeped out by Jamie from time to time!) is totally lovable. But in many scenes, you could see the facade of “we feed our kids well / we can’t afford anything different / don’t be an outsider telling us what do” cracking, and a real awareness of the dangers and costs shows through (this was especially true in the admittedly manipulative, but provocative, outdoor scene where he dumps all the fat out of a dumpster and fills a tarp full of nachos and crap). When the mother started crying about her children’s well-being, I got pretty emotional too.
As a vegan, I did think that the scene (again, Episode 1) where he takes the flesh off the chicken carcass and grinds up the bones and non-”meat” parts was the kind of arbitrary judgmentalism that irritates me. Why is a dead chicken’s muscle/tendon/tissue worse than its breast meat? I honestly don’t know. But I do think that if kids’ repugnance for membranes and connective tissue can lead them to eat something less harmful to them, there’s virtue in that. Evidently, in the UK original, when Jamie made the homemade nuggets, the kids refused to eat it (an interesting UK/US difference – not sure what that means in the end!) It’s really worth re-watching just to look at the kids’ faces. I couldn’t help thinking that whatever the overall impact of this show, at least a few of those kids are going to take something pretty important away from it. Some of the comments on the PPK confirm me in that belief – you can eat lousy food at school and still grow up and be a healthy veg*n! [I myself was a spoiled brown-bagger with elaborate 5 or 6-piece healthy lunches, and got teased mercilessly, but I ate well!]
So I guess I had three overall reactions to this:
1. This was about the most thought-provoking “reality TV” show I’d ever seen (I’m generally not very interested in that style of show). I think it’s important to see through some of the conventions (the limited time frame, the contrived nature of many scenes, the silly manipulative music, the promise of redemption) and really listen and learn from what people on all sides are saying.
2. I couldn’t help but feel that if you added vegans, vegetarians, raw foodists, locavores, organic-food buyers, backyard farmers, and anyone else who is trying to make a difference, or think they’re making a difference – hell, let’s even add in the damn cavemen, just for shits and giggles! – they all still seem like a very small group compared to the vast numbers of people who eat utter crepe in any affluent country, and probably always will. Mustn’t give in to this rather bleak thought.
3. As I say, I think JO is a pretty smart guy (and kind of adorable) who is really attacking a problem by working with existing power structures, and despite the contrivance of the show’s format, trying to do something very good and very important. BUT, I think the very limited success of his efforts in the UK shows that probably no one can crack the toughest power center of all: namely, the economic interests of food producers and their allies at local, municipal, state, county, and national levels. A cool show like this might get our hopes up, but in the end I agree with whoever said that the best you can hope for from this project is in changing a few people’s attitudes, rather than any big systemic change.
Just watched Episode 2 (High School!) and pretty much confirmed my opinions above. Sorry for the long rant – would love to know what others think.
I’m not a reality TV show junkie, but I’ve been watching Jamie’s show. While I agree with you, Mary, especially about the segment on the visit to the bison “farm”, this is network television. It’s driven by sponsors who pay for the commercials. Anecdotally, I would say that close to 50% of all commercials on television are for one of the major fast food (?) restaurants. It was probably a major behind the scenes struggle to even get this show on the air.
After being involved with animal rights for many, many years, I realized that people arrive at a changed view toward non-human animals from different paths. What it is that triggers that moment of realization in each of our lives is different for each of us. I think at least talking about cooking meals, being able to identify what you are putting into your mouth and seriously reducing the amount of fat and junk that the average person eats is a step in the right direction. I saw the segment with the elementary school children who couldn’t identify common vegetables on treehugger.com. I was shocked. There is much more work to be done than I could have imagined.
What I think should anger, upset and spur us to take action is the fact that there is an entire network dedicated to food – The Food Network. How many regular series do they have dedicated to vegetarian, vegan, whole foods or raw foods? NONE! The network runs nearly 24/7, yet not a single host is vegetarian/vegan. They used to have Curtis Aikens’ Pick of the Day series, but that show is long gone. With Michael Pollan’s and Mark Bittman’s media attention elsewhere, you would think that The Food Network would feature them, but they haven’t.
The bottom line, as always, is that it’s all about the money. Whether it’s the fast food chains, the “meat” industry or giant agribusiness, it is difficult to get your message out there when you are in opposition to those with the big bucks and, therefore, the power. I am going to continue to hold out hope that Jamie’s show will reach some people who will examine what they are eating, choose to find out more and change their lifestyle whether it’s for their health, for the planet or for the other victims of our messed up diet – the nonhuman animals who sacrifice their lives daily.
Thanks for the post, as always.
thank you so much for sharing!
oh and hello everyone at animal rights and anti-oppression! i am vegan and have just returned from a visit with some happy cows. you are more than welcome to read about my experience and witness my joys through photos of the amazing boys and girls. thanks! <3 <3
http://dinosaurobot.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/more-vegan-than-usual/
This was very interesting for me to read, as I’m a vegan from the UK and Jamie Oliver is big over here. He’s done several reality-type programmes here about food, as well as straightforward cooking/recipe programmes.
He is quite big on seeing where your food comes from – and this includes being very frank about animal death. There was a programme he did here about eggs, where he told his live studio audience in no uncertain terms about the grinding up/gassing of male chicks in the egg industry. He even had some male chicks killed on air just to make his point and force people to confront this reality. He said that if you were going to eat eggs then you had to accept that this is what happens, even in the free range and organic egg industries.
He certainly does a lot more of this ‘find out where your food comes from’ than other celebrity chefs, so he deserves a certain amount of praise for that.
However – and it’s a BIG however – my problem with his approach is: the killing of animals to provide food is presented as a ‘fact of life’, as immutable as the laws of physics. No criticism or even discussion of animal killing from a moral standpoint takes place on his shows. He never makes the point that there are delicious, nutritious alternatives to animal products out there for anyone who doesn’t want to bankroll animal suffering and death.
In the egg programme for example, he followed up his chick-killing with several tasty egg recipes which he made in front of his audience. This is a bit of a mixed message – the animals die, so you’d better get used to that, but look how tasty the eggs are! You can’t stop eating eggs, they’re yummy! The whole thing felt like an advert for the egg industry in the end, with the suffering and death of the chicks completely forgotten about.
Part of a lot of people’s mental block to going vegan – even if they’re vegetarian – is this idea of what exactly would they eat? Programmes such as the egg show just reinforce this idea, and leave people with the feeling that even if they disapprove of the suffering and death, there are no sufficiently tasty alternatives to the product in question. So the suffering and death is compartmentalised, excused, forgotten.
I’d have a lot more respect for Jamie Oliver if he showcased alternatives to animal products once in a while, and told people that if they don’t like animal suffering, there is *something else* equally tasty that they can eat. He doesn’t do this, in my opinion for two reasons: a) he is an avid consumer of animal products himself; b) most people eat animal products, and he wants to sell recipe books, get TV commissions, etc.
The latter is a self-fulfilling prophecy – the prediction that most people want to see animal products on TV cookery shows / in recipe books actually helps to create the demand for animal products, as people wish to emulate their favourite celebrity chef.
Of course, the promotion of alternatives to animal products on these shows, even occasionally, would infuriate certain advertisers, and I’m sure this plays its part too.
I completely agree with you. You are spot on, it’s exactly why I dislike Jamie Oliver so much.
Under the disguise of showing people where their food comes from he actually promotes the consumption of animal products. By doing so he exposes the fact that he has no compassion for animals, that he thinks death and torture are acceptable. Now a lot of meat eaters are not really aware of the amount of animal cruelty associated with meat production; Jamie Oliver, however, blatantly exposes this cruelty to subsequently approve of it and tell viewers to also approve of it. How sick is that?
Jamie Oliver has no qualifications to give advice on nutrition, he himself does not look healthy. All the meat he consumes is making him fatter every year. He’s a cook, not a health specialist!
It’s because of people like him that people keep believing that we are meant to eat animal products. It’s because of shows like his that a vegan lifestyle is still viewed as eccentric and animal oppression continues.
This entire post surprised me within the context of an animal rights/anti oppression site. Jamie Oliver’s message about eating animals is no different than the welfare defence we get from other “new wave” chefs, butchers, and columnists.
Mary, you state that in *your* food revolution, the children would have the option(!) of deciding whether the bison should be killed and if they decide yes, “they’d have to learn how to do it and do it themselves”. How are these given choices compatible with a vegan position and how is your message different from the messages we are bombarded with by the “humane”, “locavore”, and “ethical meat” crowd?
When Jamie Oliver begins to hear the humane myth message, we may have cause for optimism. Until then, his message for healthy eating is simply one that continues to hurt animals, despite the fact that it comes in a likable package.
I think I’m pretty clear that this isn’t remotely vegan-friendly or AR friendly. There isn’t even a “humane” message (though I’m feeling one on the horizon) because the animals aren’t given any thought.
I can’t control what others do. I could influence them through the information they get, though. If they were on a bison “farm,” the bisons are going to be killed. I probably wouldn’t be able to stop that (and we could get into myriad issues here, but I’ll leave it at that). My hope is that the young people wouldn’t choose that because they’d spend time with the bisons and connect with them as individuals. But if they did, they don’t get to have someone do it for them. It’s snarky and it’s not realistic and like every other hypothetical it’s got holes.
I was going to post this at Animal Person and perhaps I should have. I didn’t even know how to categorize it because it’s not about AR. But it’s definitely got an element of food justice, and that’s really why it’s here. As others have said, this is a small step toward getting people to think and ask questions and demand information and better nutrition in public schools.
Perhaps if we had a spokesperson as “likable” as Oliver, we’d have better reputations and would have made more inroads by now.
Here’s a fantastic Grist article about a school teacher who found out, firsthand, that “Federal rules forbid competing food being sold alongside the subsidized meal” in public school cafeterias: http://www.grist.org/article/a-teacher-crusades-for-better-school-food-and-gets-stomped
It’s outrageous.
Vegan issues aside, what was most shocking to me about Oliver’s show is how many people don’t know how to cook. The act of buying fresh ingredients and putting them together into a delicious dish to serve to your friends and family is apparently something that many young Americans are unequipped and/or unable to do! Evidence of this is how cooking has been elevated to an “art” in our culture. It’s a home skill, just like knowing how to do your laundry or clean your bathroom properly. But somehow, that home skill has been lost – and its loss coincides with the increased availability of cheap fast food, availability of processed foods in the grocery store, and the rising cost of fresh produce. When I was growing up, my mom cooked, our school cooks “cooked”, and now I cook. I know many of my peers who merely re-heat – and apparently that is what much of America is now doing. During the past year I have made the conversion to eating a whole foods plant based diet, and in doing so, I learned a lot about what’s wrong with eating meat. As a whole however, I think the problems with the Western diet are now way beyond that kind of understanding. We have now reached a level where people could conceivably debate what “food” is!
Very interesting Grist piece. Hard to imagine a teacher would be reprimanded for such an innocent gesture as providing decent food to kids…
But a little bit about the push to bison eating… Apparently the industry is on an upswing because of the relative “health benefits” as compared to regular “beef” cows… In fact…”The National Bison Association is conducting a series of workshops, funded through a grant from the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, to assist small-scale bison producers in using farmers’ markets as a successful sales outlet.” https://www.bisoncentral.com/
And ironically a senator whose supporting a come back for bison eating is given the “Friend of the Buffalo” award. Humm…
Finally it’s obvious Jamie Oliver neglects to really expose exactly how those bison burgers reach the pan. And more so, what happens to the parts that don’t. Two days ago 25,000 pounds of bison heads were recalled because “the animals’ tonsils may not have been taken out.”
http://www.agweek.com/event/article/id/16081/
Strange world when peddling apples is almost a crime… But the rest is a free-for-all!
Thanks for this post! We were just watching this show last night for the first time. I am not a fan of reality shows, and it was definitely milking the drama with the crying overweight student. I kind of felt like it was Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, but with a healthy pc agenda. And, certainly, I had the same reaction to the bison segment. Now, though, I feel like we should have paid more attention and given it more of a chance. It sounds like we could have learned something about food policy in our nation’s schools. Thank goodness for your post and the comments!
Though the show might look promising, and I especially liked the involvement of the students at Marshall during the most recent episode, here’s a sobering commentary about how the revolution has “flunked:” http://www.alternet.org/food/146354/how_tv_superchef_jamie_oliver%27s_%27food_revolution%27_flunked_out
“[T]he ‘Food Revolution’ is a failure because the entertainment narrative is unable to deal with complexities or systemic issues.” They include: “sedentary lifestyles, fast-food consumption, family meal patterns and junk-food advertising aimed at children.”
I agree that the school lunch program won’t solve the larger problem. I’d like to see a show that goes the other way and investigates the mechanics of the school lunch program and why it is the way it is. It’s not one district’s approach that needs to change, it’s the system that needs a revolution.
One thing I notice about the kids that I teach is that they are (obviously) less attached to their own way of thinking – they can still be taught, in other words. My own son teeters on the edge between “liking the taste” of chicken nuggets and feeling very strongly that he doesn’t “want to eat animals”. He’s only 8 – I can’t force him to make this moral decision yet, he’s not equipped. The best I can do is model my own vegan diet when he’s with me, and when he’s alone at school, faced with the chicken nuggets, he hopefully has enough information to make his own choices.
I haven’t watched the show because the commercials just anger the heck out of me! But, it does seem reasonable to me that he should be focusing on the kids and their ability to make their own informed decisions. The parents may be a lost cause NOW but when their kids are the ones making the changes, hopefully the parents will follow.
The first thing my husband said to me when we were watching this is how all of the healthcare companys are feeling about this whole “food revelation”. I told him that it’s not going to make a huge dent in their wallet because people are still eating meat and cheese so heart attacks, strokes, etc will still be high.
I think the only good about this show is that at least it gets people cooking and using real foods, not premade chemical and additive laden foods . In the show the animals they eat and the cheese, well from what I could tell, they were still using alot of it. I think if you know how to cook then it’s easier to add the vegetables and start changing in to a more plant based diet.
Regarding kids and their choices, my son was 9 when he decided to go vegan, they know at that age what is right and whats wrong. Kids question at a very young age about everything so it’s our responsibility to be truthful to them about where their food comes from and not to hide it from them. I only became vegan a year before my son and he had so many questions so I shared him lots of information and some small little video’s about the treatment of animals, why hide it.
Now that the show’s final episode has aired, it’s clear that there are several main points:
1-The people in the town of Huntington, WV, and probably in many other towns in the US, are not cooking/preparing fresh, whole foods for themselves and their families. Their reliance on fast food and processed food (in addition to their lack of exercise, but the show didn’t really address that) has led to our epidemic of obesity and diabetes, among other physical problems.
2-The way public schools in America feed the children of our country is adding to this problem, but it cannot be blamed on individual schools so much because there is a limit to what they can do due to the structure of the school lunch program. An individual district can pursue additional commitments of funding to change the way it feeds its kids, but that’s not a sustainable solution. What needs to happen is the overhaul of the program.
That’s what I got out of it.
Fortunately, organizations like the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine are on the case, and its “Healthy School Lunches” is a great campaign designed to educate “government and school officials, food service workers, parents, and others about the food choices best able to promote children’s current and long-term health.” Check out the details here: http://www.healthyschoollunches.org/index.cfm And here are Five Easy Steps to Healthy School Food http://www.healthyschoollunches.org/fivesteps/five_steps.cfm
For legislation, which includes “increased availability of cow’s milk alternatives” go here: http://www.healthyschoollunches.org/legislative/hsma.cfm