(Progress or Propaganda) Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

[Libertini]

http://abc.go.com/watch/jamie-olive...0784/254757/episode-101?cid=fullepisodeaccess

(It's 40+ mins long, but interesting)

This is a series about Jamie Oliver's mission to revolutionize the eating habits of Americans. He goes to the most unhealthy town in America, Huntington, WV, and tries to change the diet of the school kids, families, and town as a whole.

Although the show focuses on Jamie's private efforts, I've seen a video of a speech where he tells the audience to follow Michelle Obama's lead to end childhood obesity. It's plausible that the show may be propaganda to get Americans ready for government intrusion into our lifestyles.

I do think America does have an obesity problem, but I'm rather apathetic to this whole thing. If Americans get increasingly more obese, I just look better standing next to them. Sounds harsh and selfish, but I'm being honest here. There is no excuse for not being able to eat healthy. Damn near everyone knows how to use the internet and google. They know how to look that shit up. Do we really need to teach people to eat healthy? Bullshit. So the only logical conclusion is to assume that most obese people willingly choose to be fat or aren't willing to put the effort into maintaining a healthy lifestyle. And don't give me any bullshit about genetics. That affects a very small percentage of the obese population.

Your thoughts?

 

[pcosmar]

.

Your thoughts?

Seems to be just another self-righteous DoGooder pushing his views on others.

Got no use for them.

 

[MelissaWV]

People do absolutely moronic stuff and are often in denial about it. There are also regional bad habits (travel... you'll find them) that defy logic altogether. Deep-fried Oreos? Using strawberry milk on your sugary breakfast cereal? Chicken & waffles? Fried mac & cheese?

The obesity "epidemic" is part of a much larger picture, and it's complicated. Through a fabulous chain of events that includes the cheapening of corn and corn-related products, the cheapest and most "convenient" foods are also the worst for you. They contain empty calories, a lot of chemical additives, and they do not help meet the real nutrition requirements of a human body throughout an active day. This might explain why really active people seldom have a lunch of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and frozen fish sticks.

People who would have otherwise not had children in the past are having them. I know I'm the product of a family that should have stopped with my grandmother, who had various miscarriages and a dangerous delivery of another child before finally having my mother. My mom had to undergo a whole battery of treatments in order to conceive, and probably would have died of cancer before having any children (let alone her second) in another time. My sister got all that nonsense, but she was still able to have two kids (and I'm sure my niece will have trouble, too). I got the short end of the genetic stick in that regard, which leads to its own kind of health problems. Some of these things in the general population do contribute to obesity. I have noticed we are seeing more obese *infants* as well as children and adults. Maybe this is a combination of "undesirable genes" (for lack of a better term for it) and the chemicals we're all ingesting one way or another.

The silliest part of it all, though, is lack of activity. They're in West Virginia! It's beautiful there! There is so much room to hike, swim, bike, and do any number of other things. It's a damned shame. A lot of people go to work, come home, "cook" something that probably died months ago, or was at least chemically-conceived months ago, watch some television, and go to sleep. If they have kids, they fit that in there, too. I've seen people at restaurants and such saying that's their "weekly family night" or whatever. Really? Family time consists of going out, eating more calories than usual, and sitting on one's butt? Some people seem to excuse it by saying they're afraid, or they have no time, or their knee hurts, or whatever else.

Others I've heard (mostly co-workers) say they weren't really losing weight, so they stopped going for walks. This is the sadest part. Society has so tied weight in with how pretty/handsome people are, that people don't seem to want to do anything unless they see prompt results. I don't jog or tree-climb or swim or kayak or whatever else in order to tone muscle and lose weight. I do it because it's fun. Some people are going to never, ever, look like they want to look. Big damned deal. You'll be 70 soon enough, and by that age people kind of start to look alike anyways

Anyways, I think the show's not really going to "educate" anyone. I think the project itself is a worthy one, but the cameras are probably not adding any value to this except to really embarrass the children involved as they grow up. "Oh yeah. That's me as a chubby kid. Yeah. Nationally-televised." That's pretty much my take on Mrs. Obama, too.

If it were cheaper to cook healthy than to eat junk, and if people really valued what they were putting into their bodies, the obesity epidemic would ebb a bit, but it would not totally go away. Somehow, though, there's been a very successful campaign feeding off of the inherent laziness of humanity... that paints people who cook things from scratch as kooky people with too much time on their hands. It doesn't take that much time. It takes planning and a little bit of know-how. Or are you telling me you're too dumb to know how to boil pasta, make a basic roux, add milk and spices and cheese, combine it all in a casserole dish, and bake it, and then (here's the kicker) only eat a real serving size of it? Nahhhh it needs to come in a little blue box and the cheese has to be powdered and neon orange.

There's no helping most people.

(/end rant)

 

[pcosmar]

Ummm.yum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Burger

 

[MelissaWV]

Ummm.yum

How could I forget

Mind you, I could eat one of those... I'd probably feel pretty sick afterwards, but I could. I wouldn't eat another one for many years (if ever again). I love waffles & ice cream or chicken & waffles, and I've been known to make funnel cakes at home when we were utterly low on food/money... but yeah. What I'm saying is this shouldn't be something you eat a whole lot of

 

[Libertini]

How could I forget

Mind you, I could eat one of those... I'd probably feel pretty sick afterwards, but I could. I wouldn't eat another one for many years (if ever again). I love waffles & ice cream or chicken & waffles, and I've been known to make funnel cakes at home when we were utterly low on food/money... but yeah. What I'm saying is this shouldn't be something you eat a whole lot of

Ice cream in a waffle cone.

A burger once in a while doesn't hurt that much.

Anyways, getting back on topic. The first episode shows Jamie helping this obese family (all of them are obese, the 12 year old boy is 300lbs and the mother is a -4/10) and the most used cooking appliance is the deep fryer by far. Their freezer has nothing but frozen microwave pizzas. So Jamie gives them a meal plan for one week and even provides the groceries.

In the second episode, he goes back to their house and looks through the refrigerator only to find that a lot of ingredients he bought them haven't been used. He sees fast food cups scattered around their house. Then he asks their 4 year old daughter what was her favorite meal of the week (he assumes that they have been using his recipes and groceries). She says, "pizza!" What the fuck? Those FAT FUCKS!!!!! If I were Jamie, I would have snapped and told them they were worthless. How the hell can you agree to have somebody help you for free and then lie about following their advice?

If he wants to help people, he should do it by the numbers. If they can't stick to a meal plan for 1 week, he should 'peace out' and find another family. People that lack willpower for such a short amount of time deserve what they get. Can't save everybody, especially these fat fucks!

Chubby girls with 7+/10 faces are okay. But obese......hell no!

 

[pcosmar]

If he wants to help people, he should do it by the numbers. If they can't stick to a meal plan for 1 week, he should 'peace out' and find another family. People that lack willpower for such a short amount of time deserve what they get. Can't save everybody, especially these fat fucks!

Chubby girls with 7+/10 faces are okay. But obese......hell no!

And someone else's personal choice affects you HOW?

 

[Libertini]

And someone else's personal choice affects you HOW?

It doesn't. However, I still rage when watching the show.

 

[pcosmar]

It doesn't. However, I still rage when watching the show.

Then don't watch the stupid propaganda.

Just looked into it some
Big surprise, A British elitist.

 

[Carole]

Someone put this in a comment section on job losses. I have no idea why.

Sort of funny.

A last minute amendment to the Health Care Reform Bill, called carrot fix, introduced by House Speaker Pelosi, will require all American women over the age of 40 to drink one gallon of carrot juice per week. Mrs Pelosi, who is known as an avid carrot-juice drinker remarked: "Hey, if it works for Speaker of the House, it will sure work for all women in the United States of America." She then giggled triumphantly. The Internal Revenue Service will be responsible for enforcement.
http://sites.google.com/site/superchutzpah/home/carrot2

 

[Omphfullas Zamboni]

Hi,

Couldn't the show, in part, be read as a critique of FDA-mandated, government school, cafeteria food? I emphasize from the original post:

...the show focuses on Jamie's private efforts...

It would seem the program has a lot of promise.

Thank your for your time.

Regards,
Omphfullas Zamboni

 

[LittleLightShining]

Hi,

Couldn't the show, in part, be read as a critique of FDA-mandated, government school, cafeteria food? I emphasize from the original post:



It would seem the program has a lot of promise.

Thank your for your time.

Regards,
Omphfullas Zamboni

That's exactly how I saw it (except it's not FDA but USDA). The USDA standards promote use of heavily subsidized foods. TWO breads?

One thing that stuck out to me was how much food gets wasted. The school my kids go to has a garden. The kids are involved in raising, harvesting and processing the food so that it can be used in the cafeteria. Most of the food in the cafeteria is made from scratch-- even the pizza. After the kids eat the uneaten food is separated out, sent to VT Compost Co, fed to chickens, composted and returned to the school to fertilize the garden.

The kids are a lot more connected to their food that way.

I thought Jamie approached the whole thing wrong. He should have made pizza and chicken nuggets from scratch the first day. The fact that he didn't come in under budget bothered me, too. It's hard to plan for the amount of waste there is in a cafeteria but that should have been top priority for him.

 

[amy31416]

His efforts, I think, are mostly good...I was sort of half-watching the program while doing something else and thought I heard him talking about getting more money from the British gov't to support his program though. . . hopefully I heard wrong.

 

[Omphfullas Zamboni]

That's exactly how I saw it (except it's not FDA but USDA). The USDA standards promote use of heavily subsidized foods. TWO breads?

One thing that stuck out to me was how much food gets wasted. The school my kids go to has a garden. The kids are involved in raising, harvesting and processing the food so that it can be used in the cafeteria. Most of the food in the cafeteria is made from scratch-- even the pizza. After the kids eat the uneaten food is separated out, sent to VT Compost Co, fed to chickens, composted and returned to the school to fertilize the garden.

The kids are a lot more connected to their food that way.

Hi,

Thank you for correcting me on the proper bureau. Also, involving the kids in harvesting and processing their own cafeteria food sounds like a neat idea. I wonder how many schools do this?

Cheers,
Omphfullas Zamboni

 

[Ninja Homer]

I watched it, and thought it was pretty good.

I couldn't believe the amount of food those kids were throwing away. There was nothing elitist about Jamie Oliver... if anything it pointed out the abysmal failure of USDA guidelines for Hot Lunch. Get rid of that crap, and it would do a hell of a lot more for health care costs than obamacare could ever dream of.

I chaperoned for a winter trip for my son's school earlier this year. They were encouraged to only take what they'd eat, throw away as little food as possible, and they'd get an award if they stayed under a certain amount. 80 kids, 3 meals a day, for 4 days, and they had a combined total of about a half pound of food waste. Even that half-pound of food waste wasn't entirely wasted, because they showed the kids how they composted it. I was impressed.

If a school did that kind of thing every day, they'd probably only need to make half as much food, and then they'd have the budget for better ingredients and more cooks to make it from scratch.

Good health starts with prevention, and prevention starts with the foods you eat. There are some people that have body types that can eat whatever the hell they want and be ok, but there's a lot of kids these days that eat nothing but fast food, pizza, and chicken nuggets, and they have a higher probability of developing all kinds of health problems at an earlier age than the last few generations.

 

[sratiug]

... Or are you telling me you're too dumb to know how to boil pasta, make a basic roux, add milk and spices and cheese, combine it all in a casserole dish, and bake it, and then (here's the kicker) only eat a real serving size of it? Nahhhh it needs to come in a little blue box and the cheese has to be powdered and neon orange.

There's no helping most people.

(/end rant)

Pasta? Why eat pasta if you are trying to be healthy? Isn't it true that you only need protein and fat. Carbohydrates turn to sugar and clog arteries and give you diabetes. I'm not saying I don't eat any carbs, I'm just saying that carbs are the worst thing you can eat.

According to my reading, the sodium potassium balance (get at least 4 times as much potassium as sodium) and getting enough water protein and fat are the keys to good health. Hamburger, for instance, is high in potassium and very low sodium. Put potassium salt on it and it's very good for you. Correct?

 

[Mahkato]

Gov't intervention in the agriculture and food industries is making a lot of people fat. See here for starters.

Oh, and I should mention that I just took a swig of a 24-oz bottle of Dr. Pepper. The whole thing contains 300 calories and 80g of sugars.

 

[MelissaWV]

Pasta? Why eat pasta if you are trying to be healthy? Isn't it true that you only need protein and fat. Carbohydrates turn to sugar and clog arteries and give you diabetes. I'm not saying I don't eat any carbs, I'm just saying that carbs are the worst thing you can eat.

According to my reading, the sodium potassium balance (get at least 4 times as much potassium as sodium) and getting enough water protein and fat are the keys to good health. Hamburger, for instance, is high in potassium and very low sodium. Put potassium salt on it and it's very good for you. Correct?

"Healthy" varies depending on who you ask. I am a firm believer in there being no "bad foods" so much as there are bad ingredients, and terrible portions. If you don't eat any carbs, you are really going to have trouble keeping exceedingly active over time. I'm not entirely sure how much I'd be able to jog or swim without any carbs at all in my diet. Probably not very much. Fresh pasta is delicious stuff, and it isn't "bad for you" if you really eat a serving size. As a hint, when you make pasta with a tomato-based sauce, the veggies should outnumber the pasta, at least in my opinion. Most people eat 2-3 servings of pasta at a sitting, and I've seen some working their way towards five.

My point with the section you quoted was that making it yourself is not that difficult, more healthy, and tastes way better.

Butter and flour aren't "good for you," either, nor is most cheese. I'm not advocating changing over to a diet of macaroni & cheese (even homemade). I'm just bewildered that people have such a hard time making even the most basic things for themselves.

Perhaps a better example would be soup. People chime and echo that "soup is good for you." Is it? Most canned soup is pretty awful stuff. Even the "low sodium" and "low fat" soups are a mess. Now, take some good chicken broth/stock, some fresh vegetables, a bit of leftover grilled or roast chicken, some fresh herbs and spices... and suddenly it's pretty good stuff.

I'm not a health nut, by the way, and neither are most of the people that live to be old and active. I just like wholesome, fresh foods and find it crazy that other people would choose processed stuff over fresh.

 

[LittleLightShining]

Hi,

Thank you for correcting me on the proper bureau. Also, involving the kids in harvesting and processing their own cafeteria food sounds like a neat idea. I wonder how many schools do this?

Cheers,
Omphfullas Zamboni

I'm not sure how many schools have gardens but there are quite a few. There's another program that is pretty pervasive here "Farm to School". I thought it was limited to VT but apparently it's nationwide.

 

[New2Libertarianism]

First its good eating habits on tv, then the gov. forces you to eat well, then hitler comes to power and we have another holocaust