'Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution' Gives Hope, Begets Ranting

Now that Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution has officially hit the airwaves — the premier airing last Friday on ABC — the applause, ambivalence and anti-Oliver ranting can begin. Predictably, a show about a foreigner telling an American town how they should eat inspires a range of opinions.

I myself started out less than enthusiastic after the snarky "sneak peek" that aired earlier last week. But now that I've seen more, my hopes for the show are starting to perk up. In the premier, Oliver struck a much less combative tone than he did in the preview, switching to a more upbeat, constructive and entertaining approach.

And the more you watch him chip away at the obstacles in his way, the more you realize how surely he has reason on his side. The overly dramatic still pervades — for instance, as the New York Times reviewer Mike Hale points out, "he threatens to cry" when the school at first refuses to provide the children knives to eat their lunches — but this is, after all, reality TV. And then, instead of crying, he makes a remarkably good point: A school that won't give its children real utensils is saying that the school is no place for real food.

Some people, such as Baylen Linnekin writing in Reason magazine, clearly think Oliver is a fat-headed idiot who has no business mucking about in ways that might have serious, real-world implications such as changing people's approach to food or the government's approach to the budgets dedicated to school lunches. These are two feats Oliver has in fact performed in his native England. Linnekin is raising the alarm: Oliver is out to "subjugate the American diet"!

Well, if by "the American diet," Linnekin means chicken nuggets made of the most disgusting stuff you can imagine and just-add-water mashed potatoes, then by all means let's subjugate the heck out of it — at least when it comes to what we are collectively feeding all of our children as a matter of public policy. We're not talking about feeding them a diet of arugula and quinoa (though both are perfectly tasty), but simply about giving them food that will not push them toward an early grave.

Think what you will about Jamie Oliver and his tactics, his goal is worthy. As an American, I am ashamed that my country finds it acceptable to feed our children this way, especially because the children we're talking about are the least fortunate among us. The children most affected by this issue are those who receive free and reduced school lunches because their families can't afford "the cheap, easy, and tried-and-true alternative to school food — brown bag lunches" that Linnekin facilely advocates as the easy solution to this entire problem.

The issue of money — including, profits for big companies, the way class intersects with school food, the relative costs of eating processed versus fresh foods — is, as Hale points out, something that Oliver sorely needs to address on this show. He hasn't touched it yet, but it's only been two hours. We wait to see whether he will have the insight — and the gumption — to hit at the heart of the matter.

Screenshot: Jamie Oliver's official YouTube page