Oliver Wages Revolution on City’s Unhealthy Habits

From our friends at Healthy Monday…

In his award winning series Food Revolution, Jamie Oliver enters Huntington, West Virginia a man on a mission- to curb this city’s obesity rate and disease risk by improving the health habits of its residents. With nearly half of the adults obese, Huntington was named the least healthy city in America by the Center for Disease Control. In the first episode, Oliver speaks with a local pastor, overwhelmed that every year the city has such a high number of funerals due to preventable diseases like diabetes, heart disease, cancer and stroke.

Oliver starts out his health crusade in an elementary school cafeterias because as he says “once we change the schools, we can change the whole of Huntington.” In his school health crusade he is met by defensive lunch ladies and children with pallets so addicted to salt and sugar additives that they crave chicken nuggets for all meals- even after they see Oliver puree a chicken’s grislier bits to make those instantly recognizable deep fried patties. However the children of Huntington are unable indentify tomatoes, potatoes or even eggplant as one child finished Oliver’s prompt “egg…” as “eggsalad”. The cafeteria cooks have the skills to prepare food from scratch, but rely on processed instant food like “potato pearls”, so it’s no wonder the children can’t recognize a whole potato. Certainly a weekly Meatless Monday in the cafeteria would help these kids get to know their fruits and veggies and schools can actually purchase healthy produce cheaper than its instant substitutes using the USDA school food list.

It’s only when Oliver sees the cafeteria cooks baking hot buns from scratch that he sees a glimmer of hope for health. Following a discouraging school visit, Jamie Oliver visits the obese Edwards family to improve health within the home. After he finds their kitchen littered with fast food wrappers, Oliver performs a burial ceremony of the family’s deep fryer. Oliver teaches Justin- a young teenager highly at risk for developing type 2 diabetes- to cook a simple stir-fry. “Kids can cook. You gotta be with them, but kids can cook… in 40 minutes we went miles” Oliver reports. Research shows that families who cook together often are more likely to eat healthier and have a lower incidence of obesity. So this week start your week off right with The Kids Cook Monday and make eating right a family night.