A Food Revolution

Anyone who’s actively involved in trying to get more fruits and vegetables into schools has no doubt come across Jamie Oliver. For those that haven’t heard of him, Oliver is a British chef, restaurateur and host of The Naked Chef on Food Network. He’s been instrumental in changing the foods served to children in U.K. schools – improving the quality and nutrition of school meals by reducing the amount of processed foods and including more fruits and vegetables.

Oliver’s latest television show, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, Friday nights on ABC, finds him in Huntington, W.Va. The city was named the unhealthiest city in the United States, according to a 2008 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study, with 46 percent of adults over the age of 20 considered obese.

The show follows Oliver as he tries to persuade elementary school meal workers to include fresh produce, but he runs into problems. First, the workers don’t see the need and second, the children don’t want healthful items he prepared. Even at a young age, children in Huntington were already inclined to consume processed, unhealthy foods (the school he was at served pizza for breakfast and lunch, along with frozen French fries).

Oliver also ran into institutional issues. The first meal he prepared for the kids was a stir fry with fruits and veggies with a salad. But according to the USDA guidelines, he was short a vegetable, so he was forced to serve frozen french fries alongside the fresh food, and to his dismay the students filled up on the starchy fries and threw away the salad and much of the stir fry.

Slowly but surely, Oliver is making progress in West Virginia. In a recent episode, he was challenged to teach 1,000 people to cook in one week. He visited a local college, businesses and even closed the road to set up cooking a cooking display (with the help of U.S. Foodservice trucks in the background). In doing so, he brought in the governor of the state and changed the mind of one of his outspoken foes, a local radio show host.

Oliver is an advocate for change in America’s schools, and he could help get more fresh and fresh-cut produce into kids’ meals. You can support his Food Revolution by signing the petition for better food at schools on his Web site, www.jamieoliver.com/campaigns/jamies-food-revolution. Nearly 270,000 already have signed the petition, but that’s just a start. Let’s help Jamie Oliver help our industry – it’s a win-win situation that benefits the nation’s sc



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