Britain's New Health Minister Lambasts Jamie Oliver

Jamie Oliver's full of it. At least that's the take of Andrew Lansley, Britain's new health minister, who stated that the celebrity chef's agenda for tackling childhood obesity by improving school lunches is misguided. He reportedly told the British Medical Association that Oliver's tactic of "constantly lecturing people" is not effective in getting kids to eat more of the healthy lunches that the school system has been working hard to provide.

Oliver, known in the U.S. for his healthy-eating campaign in West Virginia, which was documented in the reality TV show Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, has campaigned for the last six years to ban junk food from Britain's schools and change the content of the country's school lunches.

Oliver, for his part, responded that Lansley's opinion is inaccurate, and that his statements are an "insult" to the school lunch cooks and other staff people who care deeply about getting healthier meals to kids. "I'm not encouraged by the news that the new health minister has summed up eight years of hard work in a few lines for the sake of a headline," he said, according to the UK's Telegraph. "I hope that we can meet soon so I can hear more about his practical ideas for ensuring this generation of children doesn't die earlier than their parents."

Commentator Harry Phibbs agrees that the minister's comments are unhelpful, titling his opinion piece in the UK's Globe and Mail, "Health Secretary should clean up his own kitchen before taking aim at celebrity chefs." Lansley, he asserts, would be better off working on banning trans fats than spending his time "denouncing Jamie Oliver."

Phibbs also makes the cogent point that making real reforms in a system is hard and slow work, so if it's true that the number of kids eating school lunch has gone down in reaction to the healthier fare, that is no reason to throw in the towel before people have gotten used to the new way of doing things. News flash: Kids think bad-for-you food tastes better. So of course they're not going to be thrilled that their menu is now heavier on the broccoli and lighter on the, a Phibbs puts it, "Turkey Twizzlers."

But who are the adults here? Since when do we let the tastes of children entirely determine what we feed them? I'd sure hate to see how Lansley is feeding his own children if he is so apt to let the "but I don't like it" argument rule all dinner-table decisions. Come on, public officials. Let's start being adults and feeding our children what we know they should be eating, not what they tell us their taste buds crave.

Photo: Jeff Sandquist via Flickr