Food Revolution

Chase and I watched all six episodes of "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" on ABC's website. (I love ABC's website! They have all the episodes of all their shows, not just the last 5.) You can watch it here, and I would suggest that you do, if you haven't already. I think there is a lot that we can all learn from it. Everyone has probably heard a lot lately about the movement toward eating more healthy, fresh, and local food and generally having more interest and knowledge in where our food comes from. I have personally been obsessed with this lately, with Netflix helping to feed my addiction by offering streaming documentaries like Food, Inc., King Corn, and of course the old standby, that arguably started it all, Supersize Me.

Anyway, Jamie Oliver, of Naked Chef fame, heard about the US government health report that exposed Huntington, West Virginia as the unhealthiest city in the US, in terms of obesity and related health problems. He travels there to see if he can help the citizens of the town to make some changes. He works with the local schools, churches, and even individual families to educate them about healthy eating and lifestyle choices. Most of his time is probably spent in the community's public schools, trying to exchange the frozen, processed, saturated-fat laden unhealthy foods being served in the schools for fresh-cooked, healthier options. Nearly everyone in the town is opposed to him at first, but as he works with people and shows them how easy and worthwhile the changes can be, he slowly gains many followers.

I won't tell the whole story here, because I don't want to spoil it for those who still want to watch it (please watch!), but I will mention some of the things I found interesting. First, Jamie wanted to see how much the children in the elementary school really knew about healthy eating. He visited a classroom of young children (kindergarten or first grade) and showed them a variety of fresh vegetables. There was not one child in that entire class who knew a single vegetable by name upon seeing it. I don't think most of them had even eaten a fresh vegetable before. And these were not all obscure vegetables either - they were potatoes, tomatoes, and such!

Another thing that I couldn't believe was the "nutritional" guidelines that Jamie and the school were required to follow. In one episode, Jamie cooked his own fresh food for lunch at the high school, instead of letting the kids go through the regular hamburger/chicken patty/french fry line. After serving food for a while, the woman in charge of school lunches for the district showed up and told Jamie that his lunch, which was a vegetable-pasta stir fry with seven different vegetables, and a side of fruit, did not meet the fruit/veggie requirements of the USDA for school lunches. So the french fries were brought back out, as those would fulfill the vegetable requirement. What's crazy is that the USDA and US government guidelines are making school lunches unhealthier than they need to be!

Finally, Jamie went to the home of a local family to see if he could help them learn to make choices that would curb their obesity problem. He went through their kitchen and dumped out all the food from their pantry, fridge, and freezer onto the table. By the time he was done, the table was filled with frozen pizzas, corn dogs, donuts, snack cakes, etc. All of it was processed, pre-packaged food - not one thing was fresh! Needless to say, every member of the family was overweight.

This just backs up my feeling that we each need to be more personally responsible for finding out more about where our food comes from. Is our meat industrially raised, crammed into unlivable spaces and injected with hormones and antibiotics and other additives just to make it "safe" for us to eat? Is our produce shipped in from other countries, contributing to massive carbon emissions and other problems that destroy the environment? It shouldn't be that hard, no matter where we live, to find at least some locally grown, in season produce, or locally packaged foods when we do need to buy packaged. Also, we can take a little extra time to make things that we would normally buy, and it is so much healthier! Making the change to foods that are healthier for us and healthier for the world around us can seem like a difficult task, but let's start small. I challenge anyone who is reading this to watch this show, and make some changes in your family's food choices today!

Also, if you feel strongly about this food issue and you want to help improve school food in America, you can go here to sign a petition that Jamie will eventually be taking to the White House to ask for the government's help in providing more nutritious food in US schools. There are at least 1,000 people from every state that have already signed up!