CNN Scribbling - Jamie Oliver Recap #1
Jamie Oliver Doesn't Want to Cook You a Salad
The crumply Cockney teddy bear is not here to South Beach, Atkins, Master Cleanse or Michael Pollan your Cheez Doodle dimpled butt into starvation or Whole Foods-based bankruptcy. He just wants you and your kids to know what a fresh tomato looks like. And maybe eat one once in a while. Or he'll cry.
In his native England, Jamie Oliver - dyslexic, erstwhile Naked Chef, husband of Jools, father of Daisy, Poppy, Petal and another to be named upon his (fingers crossed for "Stamen") or her September arrival, and self-proclaimed "professional s**t-stirrer" - has made a cottage industry of calling foul on vile school cafeteria fare and teaching plain ol' British folks not to murder their families with processed food. In the course of this, he's set up community cooking centers and classes, exhorted Parliament to address national obesity issues, campaigned to ban junk food in schools and garnered Prime Minister Tony Blair's approval for £280m in financial support for improved school kitchens and "dinner lady" education.
Oh, and he's sold approximately seventy five squillion books, owns a couple of restaurant chains (albeit one of them, Fifteen, is non-profit), regularly ranks on annual lists of richest Britons and was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2003.
He, with the aid of BFF/show co-producer Ryan Seacrest, has decided to bring his manifesto of fresh, clean, from-scratch cooking to Huntington, West Virginia - cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and The Associated Press to be one of the unhealthiest, most obese cities in the US. This should go well.
