Jamie Oliver has come to America. He is here to create a food revolution, instilling habits and a love of healthy eating in a nation where one-third of adults are obese. He is delving into the supposed unhealthiest community in America — Huntington, West Virginia — to spur a desire for lifestyle change. Against him stand stubborn community members, school lunch officials and local radio hosts, as well as a love of processed foods and a stigma of veggies.
To revolutionize the eating habits of this obese community is an extremely difficult challenge. Is Oliver up to it?
On ABC's new reality TV show "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution," the famed British chef Jamie Oliver — also known as the Naked Chef because of his commitment to minimal ingredients — revamped school lunches across England to be more nutritious and tasty for students. Now, he comes to the United States to adjust the harmful eating habits — super-sized meals, deep fried items and constant sugar-intake — that plague many the diets of many Americans. Oliver leaves his home, family and renowned restaurants in Britain to serve as a source of inspiration in revolutionizing how Americans think about food.
To encourage young kids to eat more vegetables and less processed food, Oliver experiments with creative — and somewhat extreme — approaches. Over the course of the first few episodes of the show, in order to force Americans to second guess their eating habits, Oliver dresses up like a giant string bean, makes a chicken nugget out of chicken bones and even piles up all the fat consumed by the elementary school in a single year for a public demonstration. Oliver's methods are borderline excessive and obviously geared toward a reality TV show, but his intentions in trying to make American children less obesity-prone are fully admirable.
From the very beginning, Oliver is utterly disgusted with what Americans in Huntington, West Virginia, are eating. After looking through the ingredients served almost daily in the school lunchroom, such as chicken nuggets and chocolate milk, he disdainfully shudders at the lengthy lists of unnatural ingredients and the overall artificiality of the food. At one point, he jokes that the school kids in rural communities of South Africa are receiving higher quality lunches at a lower cost than American school kids in Huntington.
So to try and reverse the overall unhealthiness of school lunches, Oliver decides to cook the lunch meals served in the cafeteria so that they are more fresh and nutritious for the elementary school children. In Oliver's revamped lunch menu, he includes fruit, grilled chicken and salad to replace the American staples of pizza and french fries. The difficulty is that he has one week to make the kids enjoy and eat the revised food choices, while he must also convince school lunch officials of the benefits of fresher food.
Throughout the episodes, Oliver seems to relentlessly conflict with federal officials, local food preparers and town media sources that are skeptical about Oliver's ability to reform American eating on a cost-effective basis. In one episode, the local newspaper condemns Oliver as a British elitist who is trying to impose his foreign customs on the "ignorant" population of Huntington. Even the seemingly benign lunch ladies in the elementary school overtly scoff at Oliver's minimal and healthy approach to cooking.
"Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" depicts Oliver fighting an uphill battle; the show thoroughly illustrates how stubborn most Americans are in changing their eating habits. If nothing else, it forces the audience to wonder: Will America ever become a health-conscious population?
Overall, the show is compelling. It clearly depicts the unhealthy eating habits of a wide segment of America and how the general American staples of fast, fried and processed foods need to be eradicated. It may just take a foreigner to propel America to leave the era of unhealthy living and eat more greens.
The show airs on ABC and airs Fridays at 9 p.m.
