I see the BBC is doing everything possible to big up Jamie Oliver given Andrew Lansley’s polite but accurate observation that the Nanny State is not our friend and that Oliver’s army of dinner ladies serving his “healthy” meals was less than successful.
OLIVER’S ARMY
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Sorry, whats the problem with Jamie Oliver?
Personally I think this guy has done a great national service by attempting to get kids to eat better food instead of that deep friend, plastic shit that “was” being served up in school canteens!
The truth is, sometimes people DO need to be told what to do. Oh, hope that doesnt make me sound like a fascist! 😉
Mailman
It does! 😉
To be fair mailman, I don’t think that was the point. The point was that in many places, as the menu changed, then take up of school meals fell. There was not the introduction of a healthy option, but the removal of choice. This, in some places, led to the students and parents voting with their feet.
Lansbury pointed this out, and suggested that it was not the content of the food that was the problem, but the compulsion which turned people off the scheme. He suggested that rather than telling people what they should and shouldn’t do, we should just educate and provide choices and leave people to make their own minds up. His belief is that over the longer term this was more likely to encourage a change in habits.
That’s not quite how the BBC spun it.
Some of these so called parents should be ashamed of the fat kids they have produced and feed on turkey fingers and 5% meat content sausages!
Take a look at countries who’s people actually enjoy eating good food, Italy, France, Spain et al. Their quality of life is far superior to that here AND their instances of heart disease and other illnesses related to poor diets are significantly lower than here in the UK.
The problem here is that we are trying to get todays children to eat healthy food when yesterdays teenage kids no nothing else than greasy kababs and fat laden chips.
Mailman
People don’t need to be told by Jamie Oliver what to do. As far as getting people to eat better food by example, persuasion and education, I think he went about it the wrong way. What he did was to try to impose the middle class obsession with pasta on working class children who are not used to that kind of eating. They wouldn’t eat it, they were unhappy and hungry and so we ended up with mothers passing food to the children through the railings of the school grounds. I wouldn’t have eaten pasta as a child and my mother would never have made me. Jamie Oliver might have had more success and better nutrition if he had tried to get them to eat things like mashed potatoes, carrots, beans, broccoli and peas with their sausage, meat pies, hamburgers or fishfingers and if he had provided better quality sausages, burgers etc.
Sadly Jamie Oliver irritates me deeply although thats my usual reaction to obviously intelligent person adopting a false persona (the mockney accent etc etc). Of course I agree that children should eat healthy meals but ultimately thats a choice for their parents (or at least for the board of governors who run the school) and isn’t one for the state and its banstabating minions.
I watched quite of few of Mr Olivers School Meals shows which sadly were a product of their time. All the parents interviewed were very stupid (I’m not sure if thats way the show was edited or if the production crew went out of its way looking for them) and themselves child like with no knowledge of what their children should be eating or what was healthy. They were then talked down to by Mr Oliver and appeared pathetically grateful for it. All the state sector school meals workers were shown as incredibly hard working but desperately in need of training or more “resources”. So Mr Oliver went along to see Mr Blair who guess what ? set up a quango and ran lots of adverts in the Guardian about what children should eat.
So thanks to Mr Oliver we got another quango , the state got a little larger and a little more confident and the message was sent out to the little people that the state will provide they needn’t do anything.
Oh and Mr Oliver became a lot richer and a lot more famous.
Sorry its not 9am and I’m bitter already.
Let’s face it, he’s just another overrated celeb, just another tv chef, just another leftie labour toady, and a prat. I can’t stand him, either. I’ve never quite understood this inane need to have celebrity anything, that the British public seem to hve bred in them. It’s as if they can no longer think for themselves and have to have a celebrity to look up to. Unfortunately, most “celebs” that we are now stuck with haven’t got a brain cell between them, more’s the pity. This is often demonstrated in the “celebrity” versions of all those cheap, crap tv programmes that are forced upon us these days. Maybe there should be a “celebrity execution” series, and we could cull a few, and have a good laugh at the same time.
I’m bitter, too, and I’ve just had my lunch!
Fully agree with 1327 and Natsman. I enjoy cooking but Oliver is a pain as for the celebs. they are becoming the centre piece of every show from Wimbledon to cooking and on down. One a year I could probably stand as long as it is not asked difficult questions such as “what would you do if……”. We have enough brainless ones in the HoC and the BBC, no more please.
Did I miss something? Al Landsley seemed to say is there are better ways of doing things than using the full force of the state to nanny people (as Liebour and the BBC like to do)
When I was a kid we used to go and eat a bag of chips if we got the chance. Difference was we did sport 3 times a week usually cross country, rugby, football and athletics.
Liebour’s nanny state killed that off
I don’t think he is even that good at cooking either. I remember one Italian mama on one of his books or shows describing his tomato sauce as “insipido” LOL. Marco Pierre White would eat him for breakfast.
This is but part of backlash against the kind of yuppie-inspired nonsense that says you can’t smoke, drink, eat butter/salt/sugar, be fat, be thin ad bloody nauseum. Someone, somewhere is benefitting from this guilt tripping.
Some of previous commenters have summed it up perfectly: it’s the coercion not the healthy foods that is the problem, and yes Oliver DID get it all wrong.
On what basis is pasta healthy ?