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YOU MUST WATCH THIS – Passionate Plea for Better Food for America’s Kids [Jamie Oliver, TED 2010]

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Spend 20 minutes watching the passionate plea of super chef turned food revolutionary, Jamie Oliver. his wish:

I wish for everyone to help create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again, and empower people everywhere to fight obesity

Some highlights from the talk:

  • For the last 7 years Jamie has been working to save lives through food education.
  • Eating good food at home binds us to the best bits of life.
  • We have an awful awful reality now – this is one of the most unhealthy countries in the world.
  • Diet related disease is the biggest killer in the US today.
  • Smoking costs way less than obesity. Obesity costs $150B a year and will double in 10 years.
  • Obesity is a preventable disease – a waste of a life.
  • Fast food has taken over this country. Some of the most important powers are fast food companies.
  • The labeling in this country is a DISGRACE. The industry cannot police itself. How can you say something is low-fat when it’s so full of sugar.
  • School lunch is critical. Lots of respect for the school lunch ladies – they are doing the best they can.
  • Knives and forks are too dangerous for school lunchrooms? This means you are endorsing fast food – which is hand held.
  • If kids don’t know what stuff is – they’ll never eat it (cauliflower, eggplant, tomato, etc…)
  • Kids have a right to milk at school – but why all the added flavorings, colorings, and SUGAR.
  • With all this sugar, any judge would find the government guily of child abuse.
  • If I came here with a cure for cancer or AIDS, you’d all line up to meet me, but here is a preventable disease. We need to reboot our thinking.
  • The fast food industry needs to wean us off the hits of sugar, fat, salt over a 5 year period.
  • Labeling is an absolute farce that needs to be sorted.
  • New standard of fresh proper food for our children in school is required.
  • Every child should leave school with 10 basic recipes they can cook that will save their lives.

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  • http://www.betterschoolfood.org Dr Susan Rubin

    What’s great about Jamie is that he is an outsider so he is better able to call us on our stuff! Unlike Michelle Obama who has to walk a fine line in her position as First Lady, Jamie can be more outspoken and tell it like it is.
    Labelling IS a disgrace! When it comes to packaged, processed food, we need more than calorie counts, we need to tell the TRUTH!

    For too long, we’ve allowed the food industry to put profits ahead of health. Chocolate milk? Its a sick joke that we somehow have let the dairy industry run the show in our schools.

    My hope is that both Michelle O & Jamie O are able to inspire people to take action on this highly important issue. We can’t have business as usual, its killing our kids. Let’s all get to work on this!

  • http://www.feedyourheaddiet.com Ken Leebow

    I’ve recommended this to people, however, he makes some bold statements that cause him to lose some of his credibility. Such as when he states that a specific 16 year-old will be dead in 6 years.

    He also makes that statement that our children will have shorter life-expectancy than adults. Of course, this claim is being made by many, however, no one knows about future medical advances that will assist in longevity.

    If you can ignore some of those claims, for the uninitiated, it’s an interesting presentation.

  • http://foodpsychology.cornell.edu Daniel

    Caught this on my twitter feed late Friday night. After watching couldn’t help but email Jamie Oliver. He exudes passion and is very much an ‘actionist’ (as opposed to an activist). The chocolate milk visual is particularly poignant.

    @Mr Leebow: Don’t necessarily agree that those statements decrease his credibility. In the case of the 16 year old, the TED video doesn’t provide enough information to allow verification of his diagnosis. The “current generation of children lower life-expectancy” conclusion comes from a 2005 Harvard paper published in NEJM.
    http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/352/11/1138
    If you don’t have access to the full-text, feel free to email me (dpg64@cornell.edu) and I can forward the pdf.

  • http://www.google.com/profiles/madeingermany Marco

    While I love Jamie Oliver and am totally on board with his message this claim is also a bit weird:
    “Smoking costs way less than obesity. Obesity costs $150B a year and will double in 10 years.”

    Smoking already costs $193B a year http://www.onlineschools.org/blog/facts-about-cigarettes/cig.jpg

    And life expectancy also decreases more for smokers, compared to the moderately obese
    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090319224823.htm

  • Natasha

    @Marco
    You’re right. Smoking costs more than obesity. I’ve just got to put this out there, and even the CDC agrees with me. Obesity is a HUGE source of mortality in the US; however, diet related disease is not the number one (preventable) killer of Americans- smoking is. Tobacco attributable disease kills about 100,000 more Americans a year than obesity.

    Both of these are serious public health issues, though, and that should be the take-home point. I hate when one cause is compared with another, and I hate it even more when it’s done with incorrect facts!