Jamie Oliver Fights L.A. School District with a Bus Full of "Sugar"

Jamie Oliver is certainly not giving up on L.A.

After being completely blocked from entering any Los Angeles Unified School District(LAUSD) cafeterias to cover school lunch reform on his second season of Food Revolution, Oliver tried to get more momentum behind his cause with a stunt earlier this week involving a school bus. Oliver and his crew dumped 57 tons of white sand into a retired, parked school bus to represent the amount of sugar LAUSD students consume in one week from the sweetened, flavored milk that comes with their school lunches. According to LAWeekly, Oliver said that up to 80 percent of the milk in LAUSD lunches is flavored, and the amount of sugar in these flavored milks rivals that of a soda. Flavored milks can contain twice as much sugar as good, old ordinary milk.

Oliver's first season of Food Revolution found much success in West Virginia, where he opened his first community kitchen. The school district Oliver worked with there now cooks much of its cafeteria food from scratch. But as the "sugar" continued to pour into the school bus and Oliver and the film crew were pushed away from the vehicle just in case the tires burst under the weight, it seems that Oliver's resolve was about to do the same. Oliver reportedly said, "I've never been so deflated in my whole career."

To make matters worse, several news sources have reported that "no one cares" about the stunt due to the fact that it drew a small turnout of people. But in this case, you can hardly equate poor turnout with lack of support. Likely to blame for Oliver's small crowd is the fact that the demonstration was held during the afternoon on a school day.  The event was also staged in the city of Carson, on the opposite end of town from Jamie's Kitchen in Westwood. Traffic to get from Westwood to Carson on a weekday afternoon could have taken potential supporters hours (welcome to L.A., Jamie).

But the debate over school lunches in L.A. schools rages on fervently regardless of audience size. Oliver has already staged a rally and has been asking parents to send letters to the school board.

Change.org readers have certainly shown that they do care about Oliver and his Food Revolution in L.A. by ardently signing our petition urging the LAUSD to let him in cafeterias. As I type this, we've sent more than 1,600 letters to Los Angeles School Board members asking them to reconsider their decision to not be a part of Food Revolution L.A. Our school lunch program needs to be overhauled, Los Angeles. Sign our petition to let Jamie Oliver help!

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Photo credit: 04deveni via Flickr