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Chef Jamie Oliver Takes on American School Lunch
By Deborah Lehmann —
School lunch is about to hit prime time television. In a new reality show that’s slated to launch next year on ABC, British chef Jamie Oliver will try to bring healthy eating to one of America’s most unhealthy cities, overhauling the food in office buildings, schools and individual homes.
The series will expand on Oliver’s two British shows. In one of those, “Jamie’s School Dinners,” Oliver took over a cafeteria and worked with a “dinner lady” to show that school food could be healthy and delicious. His campaign for nutritious lunches convinced Prime Minister Tony Blaire to set new standards for school meals and allocate £280 million for food, facilities and training.
He hasn’t stopped there. The current season of “School Dinners” examines the obstacles to making lasting improvements in school food and shows that cooking skills, proper facilities and parent support are key. He’s also come up with a six-point plan to improve food for Britain’s children:
1. Make cooking and life skills classes compulsory for ALL kids so they learn about food and good eating habits while they’re young. Our kids need to be equipped to understand food, cook and shop on a budget, which are essential life skills.
2. Recruit and train new cookery teachers, otherwise the new entitlement to cookery lessons won’t be able to happen.
3. Empower heads to make every school a junk-free zone.
4. Educate parents and help them to understand the basics of family cooking and responsible nutrition.
5. Invest in dinner ladies with proper training and appropriate, paid hours to cook food and not just re-heat junk.
6. Commit to a ten-year strategic plan and fund a long-term public campaign to get people back onto a proper diet and empower/persuade (and possibly scare, if needed) the public into making better choices.
Oliver’s American show won’t focus exclusively on school lunch, and he hasn’t said anything about a larger campaign in the United States. But the British chef is on a mission to change the way we eat, and, campaign or no campaign, his show is sure to bring more attention to the state of school food.
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