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Aunt Toby realizes that for many readers here lakeside, I am someone who talks about food a lot. And over the past six weeks, I’ve talked about the reality show "Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution" a lot too. If nothing else, he is a guy who recognizes that Americans are a bunch of people who need to have someone reach through the screen and grab them by the throat in order for them to get the message. In that, I think it can be safely said that he’s been ferociously successful with this show. He’s won the TED prize for his work and scared the living crap out of the audience when he got to give his talk.
As well he should.
As he points out time and again in the show: Today’s kids will live shorter and less healthy lives than their parents and grandparents. And he points the finger at the USDA sponsored School Lunch program. Interestingly enough, a group of retired US military generals came out with a letter this past week where they pointed their finger at the same thing, but from their own perspective, seeing that they can’t find people healthy enough to recruit into the service. So, in their view, unhealthy kids is a national security issue.
As well THEY should.
But in Jamie Oliver’s show, they danced very delicately around the elephant in the room, in their march down the road of ‘fresh food, not french fries’, and that is the School Lunch Program itself. In the final episode (which aired on Friday and can still be seen at www.abc.com along with the other episodes), finally, in a sort of oblique way, Oliver and the food staff come to grips with the USDA and the ‘commodities’ program. After all the work, after the acceptance by the kids of the new more nutritious meals, after the buy in from the local hospital and seemingly everyone else, the district is faced with a warehouse full of food that they ordered from the USDA on contract (and which they no longer wish to use) and are also faced with the fact that because schools must place their order for the school year a year in advance, they are faced with a year’s worth of the same stuff. At the end of the program, the school district food administrator is faced with trying to cancel the food order, but she also doesn’t know how she will be able to get permission from the USDA to have the flexibility they need to get the kids what they need to do the program right.
What IS this food that is in her warehouse and the cold storage facility? Things such as chicken nuggets, hamburgers, french fries, fruit packed in syrup that are priced basically so cheaply that no school district can possibly resist it. THAT is what is on the USDA list. That is what THEY are buying and providing for the schools. This is not food bought directly from farmers; this is processed junk. Filled with chemicals, stabilizers, and (shall we say it once more?) corn and soy in every form imaginable and produced by mega-corporations such as ConAgra and Archer Daniels Midland.
And where does the money come from to buy this junk? Taxpayers. You and me.
And at the end of the program, what is left for Jamie Oliver is to try to speak to the USDA about the school lunch program, to NOT provide this sort of crap on the list, to give school districts that want to make the change the flexibility and the resources to buy fresh fruits, vegetables and real forms of whole protein to feed our children. This is a huge problem and issue because Jamie Oliver will be going up against the biggest ‘fat cat’ lobby that there is: Big Ag. And they do not want to give up their ability to put their hoggish heads into the government trough. So it’s going to take a lot more than Jamie Oliver’s charm (and his skills in that area are considerable) to swim through the sewer that this process is going to be. To be blunt, as a taxpayer, I am infuriated that our money is not only going to buy junk, but from corporations whose business appears to be to make us all as unhealthy as possible. I resent money being siphoned out of our pockets to go to organizations such as this and I feel everyone in this country should be infuriated too. I resent that the school lunch program is being run by a part of the government that is firmly in the pockets of Big Ag – conflict of interest much?
This might just be the biggest and most important fight we have. Ironic that a bunch of retired generals and a dyslexic British chef with a dirty mouth should be leading the charge. But I think I can say that I think it’s worth it.
For more on how the school lunch program works (or doesn’t), go here:food and nutrition programs
For more on Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, go here: Food Revolution
(photo courtesy of bookgrl)
44 Comments
Ah for the old days when the school lunch ladies actually cooked edible food (even though we complained about it of course)
Yep, I have very fond memories of the cooks in my schools growing up, hair nets and all; they cooked everything from scratch. I do admit to seeing a lot of canned green beans (the super giant economy size), but junk like chicken nuggets, burgers and french fries, etc. did not exist.
Hey, I’m one of those who knows how to take canned or frozen green beans either one and cook ‘em down and make folks think they’ve been on the stove top for hours. Just like the lunch ladies could do.
The one thing they made when I was in school that I have craved for decades without finding anywhere was excellent cherry cobbler. I loved the cherry cobbler we got in school.
Spanish rice. It took me years to reproduce that for my kids.
I love cherry cobbler too. And, to my astonishment, I bought some in a local store (only one storefront) and it was delicious. Guess I had a lucky day. Took it too my friend who was bedridden after surgery and she was sooooooo happy!!
You wanna know what I miss? That great cinnamon cake bread with the crunchy top. Just thinking about that makes me feel like I’m going to pop out in pimples. :)
Yep, my ‘gateway drug’ for desserts was NOT received at my mother’s dining table; it was apple crisp from the school lunches. I can always rationalize apple crisp because of the oatmeal…
“On Wednesday the Senate Agriculture Committee will mark up Senator Lincoln’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, the proposed legislation to reauthorize child nutrition programs including school meals and the Women, Infants and Children’s (WIC) nutrition program. The bill includes new national nutritional standards to be applied to all foods sold in school, including food in vending machines and on a la carte lines that compete with regular school meals.
Senators Lincoln (D-AR) and Harkin (D-IA) and Representative Woolsey (D-CA) announced last week that public health and education groups had reached agreement with the food and beverage industry on the new national nutritional standards included in the bill. This is an important achievement, effectively banning junk food sales in schools.
http://sustainableagriculture.net/blog/child-nutrition-bill-markup-wednesday/
What’s been ‘effective banned’ is stuff that is considered ‘junk food’ in vending machines. It does NOT ban stuff that is nutritionally ‘junk’ from being served to kids, which is the problem at present.
And why do you think that is? Because Lincoln, Harkin and others are all in the pockets of Big Ag!
See, I am of the opinion that the school nutrition programs should not be administered by an agency and a senate committee which is beholden to Big Ag. I’m not sure how you’d do it, but the conflict of interest here just reeks.
The closest thing we had to processed food was fish sticks on Fridays.
Well, the veal cutlets probably also fit the definition of processed foods as well.
Yep – ‘veal Parmesan’, I remember it well. Served with the aforementioned warmed over canned green beans,some form of pasta, and a small salad with oil and vinegar dressing, with canned fruit for dessert (our district was really hot on ‘purple plums’ for some reason).
With us, it was the fried veal cutlets rather than parmesan
We didn’t get fish sticks. I can’t remember what Fridays were (something with cheese, I’m sure, or tuna salad). The days they had sloppy joes, though, were days that people wanted the cafeteria food. (Those of us who knew what home-made spaghetti tasted like could tell the cafeteria was serving canned.)
(Most days I took my lunch. But we all had to eat in the cafeteria, anyway.)
That was before HFCS and burritos and pizza, though, so we were probably better off.
Even in the mid-south, we got fish sticks (or maybe mac ‘n cheese) on Fridays. Even in the country schools.
Sheesh I always brought my lunch to school…sounds like I missed some thing… As for the SWEETS Mom made 95% of everything we got… including her cinnamon rolls and apple pies and the cinnamon pie crust treats…… I still use her basic recipe for my pies…
Cinnamon pie crust treats? Hmmmm? Enquiring minds wish to know!
Left over pie crust cut into strips sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar mix baked at 350 for about 20 min. real simple… Of course she made the crust from scratch.. I do cheat buying pre-made crusts… but ya can’t beat the convenience…
I never ate a lunch at school that my Mom didn’t make. I’m so surprised that so many people commenting here ate school prepared food. My schools didn’t even have a lunch program. You brought your own lunch or didn’t eat. We did have a “lunch room” where you could get milk and I think chips in high school. Maybe I’m just way old. Or maybe it was different in CA. I just don’t know.
To start it would be nice to have a food subsidy program that actually reflected the food pyramid, instead of what to do with lots and lots of corn and soy. Why does the dept of ed have a so-so role in the schools yet USDA is the overlord of all things lunch?
It was the depression. It was a way to ‘kill two birds with one stone”:
” Much of the production of the farm went begging for a market, surpluses of farm products continued to mount, prices of farm products declined to a point where farm income provided only a meager subsistence. Millions of school children were unable to pay for their school lunches, and with but limited family resources to provide meals at home, the danger of malnutrition among children became a national concern. Federal assistance became essential, and Congressional action was taken in 1935 to aid both agriculture and the school lunch program.
Public Law 320 passed by the 74th Congress and approved August 24,1936, made available to the Secretary of Agriculture an amount of money equal to 30 percent of the gross receipts from duties collected under the customs laws during each calendar year. The sums were to be maintained in a separate fund to be used by the Secretary to encourage the domestic consumption of certain agricultural commodities (usually those in surplus supply) by diverting them from the normal channels of trade and commerce. The object of this legislation was to remove price-depressing surplus foods from the market through government purchase and dispose of them through exports and domestic donations to consumers in such a way as not to interfere with normal sales.”
http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/Lunch/AboutLunch/ProgramHistory_4.htm
The other day I went into a large supermarket looking for some food. I found some, not much, but some. They don’t have an actual food aisle, they sprinkle it around in bits here and there, mostly in the rear corners of the store so you have to pass by lots of much to fetch it.
If someone could hack into Kroger’s computers maybe they could weigh the various ‘ingredients’ store wide. % corn syrup, % preservatives, % ‘flavor enhancers’ etc.
Note that this was done before Big Ag was anywhere near as big as it became after WWII. The School Lunch Program really did save several generations of kids. It’s only been in the last couple of generations that it’s been subverted.
Toby, Toby, Toby, would you please run for something? Empress maybe? In your spare time, of course.
Joel, I’m still working on “Domestic Goddess”.
yeah mean your other doesn’t bow down to you? for shame..
That’s one of the pitfalls of the Domestic Goddess career. And we may be overstock now anyway.
When women come to me for advice with questions about career choice…well they haven’t yet, but I believe a guy should be ready with the answers…I recommend against Domestic Goddess. There are all those years of preparation and conditioning and the pay is not good, mostly “thankyous”.
I would never want to minimize the satisfaction to be gained from living up to expectations but still I think Toby should go straight for Empress.
I think the show is incredible. It’s amazing how many people really don’t know how to eat, or feed their children. My kids breast-fed, and then went on goats milk. They ate regular food when they reached for it (Adelle Davis). As toddlers, they ate red snapper, homemade chicken soup, unsweetened apple sauce, lots of steamed veggies, and brown rice. Boy, the first time they spent the night at a friends house and had Apple Jacks for breakfast they thought they’d died and went to heaven!! It got harder as they got older to keep em healthy, but now as adults they know what they should do to be healthy. Don’t always do it!! But atleast they know. Can’t imagine growing up thinking that choco milk and Rice Krispies is breakfast!!! I hope this show has helped alot of people. All these poor kids on Ritalin and other psych drugs need to be taken off the sugar and carbs, put on protein and raw veggies and whole grains. Most would magically no longer be ADD, etc.
The strengths of the show are that it is great television. I am sure there are a lot of people out there who are critical of a lot of aspects of it but they were very good at putting really shocking, important information into really small memorable bites. You can be sure that a lot of people now know that there is as much sugar in the flavored milks as there is in a can of sodapop. You can also be sure that a lot of people now know that ‘today’s kids will live shorter, less healthy lives than their parents and grandparents’. On the other hand, that horrible piece of legislation is out there and people all over America need to call/write/email their folks in Congress to tell them that America’s school districts need resources and the flexibility to use them. They do not need ‘so cheap that it can’t be resisted’ junk.
Book Salon up at the Mothership with Jeff Shesol’s Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court hosted by Sanford Levinson
Uggh. I really dislike Jamie Oliver because he makes these grand statements that turn out to be utter bunk and people tend to believe him due to his enthusiasm.
For example, in his famous TED speech he says that in each of the last four generations of Americans, they have lived shorter lives than their parents. In other words, for four consecutive generations, US life expectancy has gone down.
That statistic would be utterly amazing… if it was remotely true. It’s not.
I’ve watched the TED speece. I think he actually said that four generations have set up a food culture that will cause the next generation to live a shorter life-span than we have. That has a slightly different meaning than the way you have interpreted it.
“We, the adults of the last four generations, have blessed our children with the destiny of a shorter lifespan than their own parents. Your child will live a life ten years younger than you
because of the landscape of food that we’ve built around them.”
That’s from the speech. He states that the last four generations have blessed their children with a shorter lifespan than themselves. Four generations, further, decreasing by ten years *each generation*.
Which would imply a forty year reduction in life expectancy in the US in the 20th century, which is plainly bollocks.
To be more charitable, we can take your reading, and he’s merely lying about the current generation. Or does he have a study somewhere that shows a sudden, catastrophic decrease in life expectancy in the US in the last few years? The World Bank figures show something quite different: a very long, steady, slow increase in life expectancy, almost uninterrupted, for the last four and half decades.
Odd, huh?
Just for giggles though, since Google’s World Bank data doesn’t go up to date, I pulled the more recent numbers. Who knows, perhaps US life expectancy fell by 10 years since 2005.
Nope. As of 2008, overall life expectancy was 78 years. As it was in 2007, 2006 and 2005. If you go back a bit further, it was 77 in 1999, and 75 in 1989.
In other words, there has been no significant decrease in US life expectancy. No measurable decrease at all, in fact. Oliver is full of crap.
Ha. I can remember in junior high when soy overcame beef – lunch menus no longer listed ‘hamburger’, it became ‘patty on bun’.
This isn’t just a government problem. One evening in May ’05 I took hubby to the urgent care clinic, as his pulse seemed low and he was dizzy, and he was ambulanced over to the hospital. I started agitating for him to get some food at around 3am, as his blood sugar was also crashing. After two hours of nagging, a tray appeared with barbecued beef on a white roll and large side of Texas fries (those big chunky ones) and ketchup. For a diabetic, cardiac patient.
Over our protests, they started giving him insulin shots 4-5 times per day (other than then, he’s been pills only), because “It’s easier.” After two days of this he finally went on a hunger strike, and we got attention from the staff nutritionist. We picked his meals and snacks from THEIR menus, and over the next 4 days he only ‘needed’ 2 injections – which were borderline and could easily have been skipped. Turns out, this paid nutritionist was working from a government food pyramid from 1990, and the diabetic diet was to ‘eat more fiber’.
Several days after he received his pacemaker, they were checking him out and going over all the new meds for cholesterol, etc., and I had to ask if they intended to recommend diet and exercise adjustments. “Those can work, too,” was the totality of their input to THAT conversation.
This was the visit where a short term roomie, an uninsured young man of maybe 25, was checked out with the advice, “You had a heart attack, but you’re not having one now so there’s nothing we’ll do for you. If you get to feeling worse, go to the hospital across town.”
Am I disappointed Health Care Reform turned into Corporate Insurance Boondoggle? There aren’t words.
I wish I found that amazing.
A relative just came out of a mental hospital residential for depression, where he was fed food he would normally never touch. For snacks, chips and corn chips and sugar soda only were brought around. Several varieties of soda, but not one sugar-free, not a single juice. Water may have been available. Also candy was available.
What do diabetics eat, we wondered? He’s trying hard to avoid his family’s history of diabetes, and avoids most carb foods and all sugared foods. He also finds his depression worsens when he binges on high carb or sweet food.
I must be from the wrong era or something, but when I was still in school, parents actually provided food for their children’s lunches. Amazing, I know, so it is no small wonder people are all mad about the crap the government provides. Back when my parents actually fed us kids, those parents that didn’t, didn’t have children very long, as they were taken away. Now, heck, we’ll feed em and cloth them for you, you go on back to your crackpipes and whatever it is you spend your money on.
Jamie Oliver does sinful food too. I made his roast pork belly recipe: http://www.bigoven.com/169984-Pork-Belly-Roast-recipe.html
last week. I used too many carrots (had only a bag of the little ones and just threw it a handful.) I did roast potatoes in a separate pan with garlic powder and rosemary with some of the fat (parboiled them a bit first),
What I did was 20 min at 475F then at 350F as the recipe says. I did use some flour and gravymaster to thicken and color the gravy. Really good, but not for every day. Much of the fat is cooked out, and I did choose a very lean piece. The crackling was Awesome!
I don’t believe he was talking about four generations of diminishing life spans. I still believe he was talking about what four previous generations have done to diminish the current generation’s nutritional intake and as a result their life spans. I’m am giving the correct interpretation of the quote. Either way, the food the USDA and our corporate farm culture are pushing on children these days is appalling and I applaud whatever Jamie can do to change the way we look at child nutrition. Parents have forgotten to teach children about real food and that took more than one generation to happen. Check out Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.
I’ve read some of Pollan’s stuff and he comes across as remarkably naive in some areas. On other points he says some fairly common sense things, but.. feh. Not a fan.
As for Oliver, the current ‘generation’, as in people born in the last couple of years, still has a high projected lifespan. 78 years. That’s higher than my life expectancy, which was higher than my mother’s in turn.
No matter how you slice it, he’s wrong on the facts.
The problem is that the school lunch program is under the Agriculture committee and not the department of Education. This program is used to help with stabilizing prices and using products that would be harder to market. Why should the agriculture department be involved at all. They are because, just like Government cheese, it becomes available when there is a surplus. It helps support prices. If the school lunch program provided guidelines on nutrition and menu suggestions and then let the schools buy from the local farmers where they could. The menu could return to a more normal dinning fare. It needs to be under the committee that has students as constituents rather than ADM.
I was a kid in California in the 1950′s and our school lunches were wonderfully made by the lunch ladies. A favorite was some kind of red beans and corn bread on Fridays. I’d love to have that recipe! Then years in Houston, TX where the food was real. The best chicken pot pie I’ve ever had. And real veal cutlets. (I was a teen and didn’t know veal was ‘bad.’) This was an era where pizza didn’t yet exist. If my grandkids could eat as well at school, I’d be pleased.
I believe Mr. Oliver missed more than one point. To me the biggest point that he missed related to bringing your own lunch to school – pack it. In fact, he was against it.
What could be easier than a parent making a healthy lunch? Of course, Mr. Oliver presented some of the lunches that parents sent…not very healthy. However, if there was a movement to pack it, maybe the USDA might get the point. And, at a grassroots level people could easily eat a healthy lunch.
As Michael Pollan stated: “You can leave the Western diet without leaving civilization.”
Ken Leebow
http://www.FeedYourHeadDiet.com
You should check out Kate Adamick’s posts re Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution on The Atlantic’s website over the last 4 weeks, including this one addressing commodity foods:
http://www.theatlantic.com/food/archive/2010/04/school-lunches-helping-kids-eat-commodities/39561/
http://www.theatlantic.com/kate-adamick/