NEWS JUNKIE POST
Apr 28, 2010 at 3:50 pmWhat’s Eating America? Oliver’s ‘Food Revolution’ Not Just Made For TV
Before you eliminate all Reality TV from your entertainment diet, I suggest you indulge in “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.” While the limited series wrapped up last week, complete episodes are available at ABC.com and Hulu.com.
The set-up sounds a little cheesy: a celebrity chef with a heart of gold infiltrates Huntington, West Virginia which earned the Center for Disease Control’s dubious distinction as “The Unhealthiest Town in America,” and in a week’s time tries to repair generations of poor eating habits. Good luck with that one, bloke. Add Ryan Seacrest as executive producer, and you can pretty much expect an ersatz show dripping with sugar substitute and schmaltz. And while those two ingredients figure heavily into the six episode menu, the show is surprisingly entertaining and actually has a purpose that is largely missing from the empty-calorie junk food TV that fuels most of the Reality genre.
The show’s biggest asset is Oliver himself. A British celebrity chef, famous this side of the pond for his series “The Naked Chef” and “Jamie Oliver’s Cooking School,” the guy is clearly on a real mission. He wants to bring the “revolution” he started a few years ago in England’s schools, to Appalachia. We all know Americans are getting fatter and fatter, and diabetes and heart disease are growing at alarming rates throughout the country. Our high-fat, high-processed, out sized diets are, more often than not, the culprit. And he points out the grim reality: this generation of children may well be the first to live shorter lives than their parents.
Acknowledging the dire predicament is one thing; doing something about it is something else entirely. As Oliver finds out as he faces the principal–who begrudgingly goes along with the local school board’s directive to allow the British interloper access to the cafeteria for a week-as well as a local DJ ( from the country station ‘The Dawg”) and a band of skeptical and uncooperative lunch ladies, whose leader head cook Alice Gue is ready to make mince meat pie out of her guest chef.
Okay, so we know we’ll be at least entertained. And we are. DJ Rod bets Oliver during a brief on-air promotion that the chef won’t be able to get 1000 people to join his cooking boot camp. “We don’t want to eat lettuce, ” Rod says with disdain, adding, “Who made you king?” Oliver, blindsided, accepts the bet, but leaves the radio station grumbling, calling Rod “a grumpy old git.”
But there are moving moments, too. Oliver tosses a week’s worth of junk food on a local family’s kitchen table, showing the mom, Stacy Edwards who shares weighty woes with her husband and four kids, just what sort of garbage her family regularly consumes. Then the family–minus dad, who’s presumably at work–ceremonially bury the family’s deep fryer in the backyard. Jamie makes a promise to the overweight teenage son–who confides both his sorrow over schoolhouse taunts and a desire to become a chef–to teach the boy healthy cooking. The drama is undercut by Oliver’s post-script revelation: “Dad’s gonna kill me when he finds out the fryer is gone.”
The affable Oliver also deals with the town’s ire after comments he made calling the townsfolk–who already suffer from self-esteem issues thanks to Appalachian stereotypes–”anemic in their knowledge” surface in the local newspaper. He back peddles, says the quotes were out of context, does an impromptu interview with the local TV station praising the town and gushing his love and concern for the people. Really, it’s not as saccharine as it sounds. And that’s thanks to Oliver and the real people of Huntington he tries to convert.
I won’t tell you whether Oliver succeeds, but I will say while he shouldn’t hold up any “Mission Accomplished” signs, by the series’ end some changes have taken place, some minds have been altered. Including that of his hard-headed nemesis school cook Alice. And that’s a start. A much better start, by the way, than the breakfast pizzas that so shocked and disgusted Oliver upon his arrival at the local school cafeteria.
And “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” is not just a TV show. It is a movement. The kitchen established in Huntington to educate people about healthy eating and cooking is up and running. And there is an online effort to re-educate families and schools. For more info: Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.
As for the show, let’s hope Oliver takes on another city next season. I have to admit, watching the show is almost as addictive as eating Peanut M&Ms. Almost.
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That’s a lot of JUNK FOOD that the family eats. I hope that Jaime can get them on the right track. Don’t get me wrong we all like some of those things, but not constantly. It shouldn’t be their sole choices.
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