Jamie Oliver has always been someone within the food space that I’ve tracked with. His attitudes around simple delicious dishes that use local fresh ingredients is definitely something that I agree with. Along with being an amazingly accomplished chef and author, he’s done great work advocating for healthy lunches in the schools throughout England.
Well this year the TED conference (Technology, Entertainment, and Design), a conference where some of the smartest people in the world come together to talk about world’s issues, honored Jamie with the TED Prize for 2010 for his work in fighting childhood obesity by teaching children about food.
He gave a really moving talk (embedded above). He illustrates through numbers and some very moving stories how diet related illness kill more people every year then anything else. He also comes with a pretty awesome action plan of, which I agree with, of how to combat it…
- Every super markets needs to have a food ambassador that’ll help their patrons be smart about food and how they prepare it.
- Big food brands need to put food education at the heart of their business.
- Fast food companies need to start thinking differently and working to get us off of our addiction to fatty, sugary, and overly processed foods.
- Better regulations around how food is labeled.
- Kids in schools need to be cooked local healthy food.
- Every child needs to be taught 10 recipes that they can use for the rest of their life.
- Their needs to be greater funding for getting healthy food into schools.
As I’ve talked about before on this blog, from a very young age, I was blessed with an amazing mother who helped and encouraged me to learn my way around a kitchen. Also, Both of my parents have been encouragements and examples for eating healthy but I know that others aren’t so lucky.
I a big believer in what Jamie’s advocating. We need to do something. While Washington DC is flailing trying to figure out how to fix health care, we can do so much to actually fix our health.
This is Jamie’s mission statement…
“I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.”
Seriously, watch Jamie’s talk and let’s do something about what’s happening.
I have been following Jamie Oliver for a few years on his different cooking show and have been a big fan of his style of cooking. I even watched Jamie’s series on how to improve the British school lunch system.
It took a bit of time to get the parents, students, and even the lunch ladies to start realizing that real food was better for the students. Once the students started eating better they paid more attention in classes and improved their grades and all they did was improving their eating habits at school and at home.
While at TEDxMidAtlantic this last fall (2009) there was a great talk by Tony Geraci, who is a “Fresh Food Advocate” for the city of Baltimore. You really need to watch Tony talk passionately about getting kids foods that are good for them. I strongly recommend that you watch his video from TEDxMidAtlantic – http://tedxmidatlantic.com/live/#TonyGeraci
So impressed with Jamie’s idea that I’m up at 3:25 AM after watching his TED wish that I’m writing this comment to make sure I get this out to you and your followers.
I know I have a way to go myself to improving my food habits and health. By starting to do more home cooking myself and bringing my lunch to work that will help me out in the long run. Doing so will improve my health without a lot of extra effort and if I add some exercise it will make it even easier.
P.S. I even listed to Tony’s whole talk while writing this comment. Please take the time to watch both of these powerful videos.
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