Jamie's Food Revolution Hits Hollywood

4 May 2011

Jamie's Food Revolution Hits Hollywood, Tues 17 May, 10pm, Channel 4

 

Last year Jamie Oliver traveled to America's unhealthiest city - Huntington, West Virginia, population 50,000 - to get to grips with America's junk food addiction. Now he's returning to the US to take his food revolution to an even bigger target - Los Angeles, population 11 million - a place where "it's easier to get a gun, crack or a prostitute in a lot of areas of (this city) before you can get a tomato".

"In all the years that I've done campaigning TV, we've had our issues, we've had problems, we've had arguments, we've had our ups and downs, but I've never had an organization completely shut us down."

Having tackled the state of British school food and home cooking, last year Jamie Oliver traveled to America's unhealthiest city - Huntington, West Virginia, population 50,000 - to get to grips with America's junk food addiction.

The result was the Emmy Award-winning Food Revolution series and the start of the Jamie's Food revolution movement across the USA.  But now Jamie is returning to the US to take his food revolution to an even bigger target - Los Angeles, population 11 million - a place where "it's easier to get a gun, crack or a prostitute in a lot of areas of (this city) before you can get a tomato".

Diet-related problems including obesity, heart disease and diabetes mean that America's children could be the first generation to live shorter lives than their parents.  So Jamie is taking a stand about how America feeds itself at home, in schools and eating out. 

But the campaign gets off to a disastrous start when the city's school authority, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) which is responsible for 650,000 school meals a day in the Los Angeles area, refuses to let the chef film in their schools.

Jamie decides to try to win over parents and teachers in the hope of persuading the authorities to change their mind - one outraged parent is disgusted that her child is offered "nothing fresh" at school, only processed foods cooking in plastic.

He opens a kitchen in affluent Westwood, where he hopes to teach people the skills they need to combat the obesity epidemic.

But he's confronted with the scale of the problem at a school lunch convention, when he discovers a seminar advocating flavoured (and sugar-laden) milk in schools.

Jamie stages a dramatic demonstration, filling a school bus with the 57 tonnes of sugar which the children of the LAUSD area consume every week - purely from their intake of flavoured milk.  But it falls short with the local community

Desperate for some good news, he attempts to create a healthy fast food menu in a local drive-through restaurant. But is his food revolution doomed before it's even got started?