OK, everyone! Are we ready to dig into last night’s episode of Jamie Oliver’s “Food Revolution”? I’ll give you my take, then you share yours below.
Before we begin, let me say that although J.O.’s people awarded me “Blog of the Month” back in November, I’m assuming they can’t strip me of that honor now, so I’m going to be as honest as possible in my criticism. But I also want to reiterate that overall I’m always going to be big fan of J.O. for bringing national attention to some really serious problems. And I confess I just find him adorable. (Yeah, I’m that superficial.)
Much of the show was devoted to Oliver’s dismay that the Los Angeles Unified School District wouldn’t allow him to film “Food Revolution” in their schools. The show did an excellent job of making LAUSD officials look like they were engaging in a Watergate-level cover-up, with lots of unflattering shots of school board members looking mean and sneaky, while J.O. was portrayed as an sweet, innocent guy, wanting only to come improve the health of students in LA — and not the co-producer of an expensive reality show that might tank if access were denied. (Frivolous aside here: how many people suspect the “crazy guy” at the school board meeting was really an out-0f-work actor looking for his big break?)
I’ve got to say, this whole theme bugged me because after the first season of “Food Revolution,” there are lots of reasons why any school board might refuse access to “Food Revolution.” Good magazine reports that a follow-up study in West Virginia found “that his new school menus, while marginally healthier, ‘were not well-accepted and had a negative impact on meal participation and milk consumption.'” Moreover, his show made Huntington look terrible, and no doubt LAUSD was trying to escape that same fate. What someone in their Communications Department should have figured out, however, is that by denying Oliver access across the board, they now look far, far worse. I’m sure in retrospect they wish they’d thrown him a bone by giving him some kind of limited entree into one of their schools.
I thought it was brilliant of J.O. to ask parents and kids to bring school food to him, and of course it was only going to look worse hours or days after it was served. The stuff shown is a lot like what we see in Houston, where, like LAUSD, we also have a central kitchen and therefore a lot of food (at least at breakfast) comes wrapped in — and is reheated in — plastic. I find that practice totally alarming but have never even raised it with HISD, because I feel like we’ve got to first improve the food and then get into the logistics for serving it. So I was really glad that J.O. raised the issue of the safety of heating kids’ food in plastic every single day.
The food looked terrible and I’m sure it is, but I did note that there was some lovely looking corn on the cob on the table that was never raised before the cameras. That annoyed me because now I don’t know if J.O. is giving me a fair picture of the food or only showing me the worst of the worst to create the most drama. (How many people howled when the kids with the apple said they were home schooled?)
This next critique will blow your mind, but J.O.’s demonstration of ammonia-treated beef also left me a tiny bit ambivalent. I wrote about this practice almost a year ago (“One Burger, Please, Extra Ammonia and Hold the E. Coli“) and of course, like any sane person, I’m absolutely horrified by it. But by pouring straight ammonia — cups and cups of it — directly onto the beef, J.O. left viewers with the impression that merely putting the beef into your mouth would kill you on the spot. In fact it’s treated with an ammonia gas and the real news is that the process doesn’t even work — ammonia-treated meat can still be contaminated with E. Coli and salmonella. (I’m also under the impression, based on something I read from Agriculture Secretary Vilsack, that schools no longer use ammonia-treated beef, but if anyone has info to the contrary, let me know.) But don’t get me wrong — J.O.’s overall point about meat quality, knowing where one’s meat comes from and what’s in it, is critically important and I’m glad he raised it.
The sugar in the school bus demonstration was pretty awe-inspiring, I’ve got to say. I kept telling my daughter that we had to keep in mind that the sugar we were seeing needed to be divided by 650,000 (I believe that’s how many kids are served in LAUSD) but it still brought his point home. (I need to add here that I am not necessarily a proponent of banning flavored milk, something that will horrify a lot of you. But I’m not going to get into that now or it will take up the rest of this post. I promise to address that controversial issue in the near future.) I also thought it was a little lame that J.O. claimed that the poor turnout for his stunt showed that he was getting the “cold shoulder” from L.A. More likely, his advance team just did a bad job publicizing the event.
The whole portion of the show dealing with the fast-food restaurant sort of puzzled me. It seemed weird to expect that a guy who’s been selling burgers, fries and shakes for forty years is going to happily revamp his menu to offer far more expensive and entirely different sorts of foods. The fact that he was reluctant to do so only shows that he’s economically dependent on a successful business, not that J.O.’s idea of improved fast food wouldn’t be a big hit sold elsewhere. (I could see lines out the door for such food in many neighborhoods.)
But I did find that moment when the customer was asked to choose between the two burgers absolutely telling. He could clearly appreciate the flavor of fresher, less processed food, and he might even have understood which was healthier to eat, but he still wouldn’t pay more for it. That was deeply depressing, and probably reflects the view of a lot of Americans, whether out of economic necessity or just a desire to save a buck.
Finally, I thought the scenes with J.O.’s family were adorable, but as many have noted, it does feel a little icky that he chose to enroll his kids in L.A. private schools when the whole focus of this show is public school. (And as Dr. SuRu noted in a tweet last night, putting the kids in public school might have given him far more leverage before the school board.)
OK, there’s my off-the-top-of-my-head review of last night’s show. Your thoughts???
Johane says
I thought the show was brilliant. He did a wonderful job in Huntington, and he’s encountering resistance in LA. People don’t want to change – even if they know they have to. An old friend of mine passed away years ago in his early 20’s. He had a heart condition and required a transplant. He just couldn’t lose the weight to be able to have the surgery. He couldn’t stop eating the foods that finally killed him. Change is hard, and people are reluctant to do it even when they have the best reasons to do it.
What I can’t get over is the pollution this school board promotes with the individually wrapped meals! There was at least 2 big garbage bags worth of wrapping and trays in Jamie’s kitchen… How much more is there in the schools?! Not that the food was any better. I didn’t see the corn that you mentioned, but it could well have come from
the homeschoolers.
I loved his meat demonstration. People need to know where the meat comes from including from which part of the cow. I can tell you that I have long suspected that frozen burgers and meatballs were made with dog food quality meat. Now I know it is. Blech!
As far as the LAUSD? I have seen the same stone-faced expressions from city councillors who’ve got a backroom deal going… In my case it was closing a local library. There is money in food. What we need to do is remove the profit from school lunches and increase proper nutrition an we’d see the worldwide conglomerates get out of school. Chartwells is a part of Compass Group, which also owns Pizza Hut and KFC. Even where I live, and we have strict dietary laws for school lunches, Chartwells serves meat patties & “rubberised” chicken regularly. Not only that but the cooks are required to work within certain time constraints so that the labour costs stay within certain guidelines. It is insane!
So the school board has political reasons to want to keep Jamie out of the kitchens. You can see it when they reffered Jamie to a representative and then how they sweetly booted him out of the meeting with nothing. If a person is above board, they wouldn’t be embarrassed to be put on the spot and answer a few questions -even I front of cameras.
In so far as the sugar stunt goes… I’m not surprised there wasn’t much of a turn out. People don’t care what is in their food. So what if the kids in LA drink tons of sugar in one week? At least they’re drinking milk right? Even if you do divided all that sugar into appropriate daily amounts per child… 28g of sugar is still a couple of tablespoons worth of sugar. The old song is “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down…” I would hope to think that people don’t consider pure milk is not as bitter as the medicines of old were!
People should be eating healthy foods for the sake of enjoyment and good health. They shouldn’t drown healthy food in cheap fillers and flavour enhancers so that the foods are more “palatable” or stable (as in long shelf life…) If this is the kind of food we are giving our children when will they ever learn what real food tastes like?
As far as the fast food joint Jamie stopped at? I can tell you that we have a rocking healthful burger franchise in my hometown. Yeah, we have fries on the menu. Shoot we even have poutine on the menu! Potine, for those who don’t know, is fries covered with cheese curds and drenched in chicken gravy… Oh yum! Really! I love the stuff! I’s a heart attack on a plate, but it’s a nice treat sometime. However this joint also has a rocking coleslaw with sunflower seeds and a cider vinaigrette. The burgers though are a meal in and of itself. Seriously! Fresh made patties (choice of beef, turkey and vegetarian) cooked to perfection on a bun with garlic Mayo sauce and a beet relish topped with ketchup, mustard, tomato and lettuce (for the Simpleton… Other burgers add to this their respective toppings). The burger is so filling in and of itself, I can hardly ever finish my fries. My meal costs a little more than what I would pay at any other burger joint, but I know I’ve eaten well. It can be done and it can be successful. I agree, a milkshake is only a milkshake if it has ice-cream in it, but it doesn’t have to be 2-3 scoops that end up filling the blender almost halfway. One scoop is enough with frozen berries to give you the richness of the ice-cream and the mouthfeel of the milkshake. I would have liked to have seen what Jamie’s chocolate milkshake was like.
Overall I give the show a resounding A+. Jamie is above board and straightforward with people. Even in his pink slime demonstration he states that he does not know the appropriate ratios of water:ammonia:meat. Does it really matter? Companies created this so that we could transform F grade meat into a product safe for human consumption. Jamie is passionate about the overall wellbeing of people and it translates well to the screen. He may not send his children to the public schools in LA, but after what I saw yesterday I don’t blame him. If I had a choice I wouldn’t either! Keep up the good work Jamie! It makes a difference!
Johane says
Correction about milk: “I would hope that people don’t consider milk to be as bitter as the medicine of old.” (another note about flavoured milk: companies started making chocolate milk to extend the life of the unsold regular milk. Think about it for a second: companies take milk that is about to be spoiled and sweeten it up to a point where they mask the off flavour of spoiling milk and give it to your kids…)
Bettina Elias Siegel says
Johane – you raise many points that I should address, but I’m still too stunned by the concept of the Poutine, which I think I must locate immediately. 🙂 Seriously, though, just on the point of environmental waste, you would not believe how much waste a huge district like Houston (7th largest in the US) generates daily. Styrofoam trays (biodegradable, I’m told), plastic sporks, paper napkins and a huge amount of plastic wrappers, served to 300 schools every single day. There are advantages to having a central kitchen but the plastic/paper waste is a clear drawback. And yes, no question that pink slime is gross no matter how depicted and I’m really glad he talked about it, but I also take Dana’s point that pink slime has little to do with local school districts and a lot to do with the federal government. But if it raises enough of an outcry, all the better. Thanks for commenting on TLT – come back next week and tell me what you think of episode two!
Dana Woldow says
As I feared, JO did spend a lot of time bashing the LAUSD for not cooperating with his reality show. But two things really jumped out at me. The first was in regards to the “pink sludge”; JO made it perfectly clear that the USDA allows this stuff, not just in schools, but also in the country’s food system, possibly in that burger you ordered at a neighborhood restaurant last weekend. But did he ever, at any point, suggest that the riled-up parents (or the folks watching at home) contact the USDA and register their outrage at being allowed to unknowingly consume “pink sludge”? Did he suggest that anyone contact their elected officials, who oversee the USDA, and register outrage there?
No, he just left it that this was something for the furious parents to work out with their own schools. Fat chance of that happening, or of the parents being able to drive a revolution of lunch ladies and student nutrition directors to bring about change – those folks are all too swamped trying to comply with the plethora of USDA regs which govern school meals, and trying to put together something relatively healthy the kids will eat on the pitifully low government reimbursement for a free meal. They have no time to lead a revolution. I thought that was what JO wanted to do, but when he had his chance, just as he had viewers, myself included, ready to take action against “pink sludge”, he punted. Why?
The other thing that jumped out at me, as it probably did for everyone, was the school bus full of “sugar” (actually sand.) JO has said that he loves “stunts” to make a point, and this certainly qualified. However, to put that overflowing school bus in proper context, as Bettina has mentioned, you have to keep in mind that it represents the sugar available to the 650,000 kids in the LAUSD, a population large enough to fill 7 stadiums (stadia?) the size of the approximately 92,000-seat Rose Bowl. So to get a true picture of the amount of sugar per kid per week, you have to imagine the sugar pile cut into seven parts, then each part divided by the number of people in the Rose Bowl picture linked above.
Doesn’t seem like such a horrifying amount when presented that way, but that’s reality TV for you.
Bettina Elias Siegel says
Wow. Rose Bowl picture puts things in quick perspective.
Bri says
Thank God my husband taped it for me while I was at choral rehearsal…too bad he accidentally missed the first 15 minutes!
Oh well. Here’s what I thought:
1) I agree with you, Bettina, that there are many sensible reasons the LAUSD might have decided not to allow him access. I also thought that it seemed sort of odd for Jamie to be making what appears to be a giant quantum leap — from tiny Huntington, W.VA to Los Angeles. There’s a humongous difference between small-town America and major, giant-city America; the culture is different, the approaches are going to have to be different, and the bureaucracies are bound to be even more entrenched. I’m not terrifically surprised that he’s met with so many obstacles, nor am I surprised that his “star power” doesn’t have as much cache in L.A. (of all places — where everyone is a “star”). I think, honestly, that Los Angeles was a big miscalculation on his part. I want to see him go someplace where he’s WANTED and INVITED and then see what he can do when given access…not watch him struggle again and again to make any headway at all.
2) The fast-food guy had my support last night, honestly. He was nice. He listened. He allowed Jamie in. But I completely understand and support him in his points. Jamie seemed to be saying that you can CALL things anything you want — he was calling a fruit smoothie a milkshake and thinking that that made it a milkshake. I could call a dog a cat, but it wouldn’t be. Now. Stop fighting that fight, Jamie, and show the guy how to take the syrup out of the milkshake first; then show him how to gradually reduce the ice cream; or sell your smoothies side-by-side with his milkshakes and see what wins. It felt like Jamie was pointlessly arguing instead of creatively solving things as he would usually do. Also, the beef? Again, i get it, and I’ve spoken on my blog about meat sourcing at length…but Jamie wanted this restaurant owner to break a 40-year business relationship and start paying quite a bit more for his meat, thus necessitating raising prices on his customers, thus possibly putting his business OUT of business. He’s not a big franchise; he can’t absorb that risk. I don’t fault him for not doing it. I also think Jamie should have said “Look…don’t take things off your menu. In fact, don’t change ANYTHING you’re doing. Just let me ADD a small ‘healthy options’ menu to your fare and offer it for 1 month at my expense. Then we’ll analyze the bottom line and see what we’ve learned.” Much less aggressive, much more cooperative, and probably much more effective in the long term.
Bettina Elias Siegel says
Bri: I so agree about the milkshake. I love a good smoothie, but when I’m in the mood for a shake, only a shake will do. It did seem like that whole portion of the show was an attempt to generate a little “conflict” when a solution like yours — do a pilot with part of the guy’s menu -seems obvious and logical.
Brad says
So I never watched S1, but heard a bit about it, been getting more interested in food issues and started on Janet Poppendieck’s book that you recommend as well as reading some of the other links here as well as Dana’s materials.
To me this show is reality TV at its worst. The most interesting piece was the part with the ground meat and as Dana stated above the missing link was this has NOTHING to do with school food. Lobby Congress and/or the USDA to change the rules. Vote with your pocket book, only eat at restaurants and shop for meat that is not cooked that way.
For that reason, I disagree with you about LAUSD non-participation. I think the LAUSD made the right call, Jamie has 0 interest in really helping them and W Va is suffering from his S1 efforts so let Jamie bluster on a bit if he wants.
Lastly, I would come closer to respecting him on this issue if his kids were IN PUBLIC SCHOOL at LAUSD!
Bettina Elias Siegel says
Brad – so glad that you’ve found TLT and that the resources have been useful to you!
Shira says
I had a lot of the same thoughts and criticisms as everyone else.
I decided to watch the show with my 11 year old daughter, and these were her three comments –
1- I wish he could come to our school and make the lunches healthier.
2- Now I know why you don’t ever let us eat at McDonalds or the school lunches.
3- I’m going to switch to regular milk instead of chocolate at school (yay!)
Bettina Elias Siegel says
Wow – excellent result! 🙂
Catherine says
About J.O. putting his kids in a private school instead of the public school system:
While I agree that he might have more leverage and make a stronger point by placing his children in the public schools, why would he put his children in a situation he finds unfit to make a point for his show or his cause? The same has been said about Waiting for Superman. In the beginning of the film it is said that the documenter had placed his child(ren) in a private school. I have heard this criticized in the same regard, placing the children in the public schools would make a bigger impact but at what expense. In the end, we want to help everyone but it starts with our desire to give our children the best we can.
Brad says
Well assuming only objection to the public schools is the food he could pack home made lunches. He could also visit the classroom, volunteer, donate some of the tens of millions he will make this year, etc. Do the types of things Dana has done (without the tens of millions in personal income 😉 to actually improve the situation.
Dana Woldow says
Well thanks, Brad! In addition to the reasons you’ve given for why JO might have been better off enrolling his older kids in the public schools (at least 2 of them look too young for school at all) is that as a public school parent, he would have had easier access to school cafeterias; certainly he could have strolled into the cafeteria at his own child’s school (sans cameras) and chatted up the lunch lady. I bet he could have learned a lot about what goes on in the LAUSD cafeterias just from that alone, and as a parent at the school, the Board of Education would not have been able to keep him off the premises (although they are within their legal rights to keep his reality TV cameras away.)
As a public school parent for 18 years, I can tell you that there are other advantages to having your kids enrolled if you are trying to improve the school food. It gives you direct access to teachers, other parents, and other students, and from them you get to hear a wide cross section of opinions about and experiences with school food. You can join any existing school nutrition committees as a parent representative and have direct access to the people who are already working on better school food within the district.
I don’t dispute any parent’s right to enroll their kids in whatever type of school best suits their needs, including a decision to homeschool; however, as I understand it, JO is only in Los Angeles for a few months filming this show, and he and his family will then return to England. At most this would be a “semester abroad” for his kids, and a wonderful opportunity for them, as well as for him, to experience the reality of daily public school life in Los Angeles. But then JO is not after ‘reality’, but rather ‘reality TV’, which is something completely different.