Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Gaining Ground
Jamie Oliver is one celebrity chef who gives back. In addition to furthering his own culinary education by traveling around the world, Oliver set up the Fifteen Foundation which trains 15 at-risk youths at a time to work in the restaurant business. He has also long campaigned for better quality and less processed food in England’s public school system.
His original BBC series, The Naked Chef, gained popularity—not for a nude Oliver but for his simple, easy and flavorful cooking. He has come a long way from his parent’s pub in Essex, with multiple TV shows and cookbooks under his belt, and even an M.B.E. from the Queen herself.
Oliver comes across as a hard-working sincere man who wants to change the way people cook and eat, and does so in a very personable way. Last week he was recognized by the TED community for his visionary ways. TED, a nonprofit devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading” sponsors an annual conference that brings together the best and the brightest from the technology, entertainment, and design sectors (hence TED). In addition to bouncing around ideas and inspiring one another, the TED Prize was designed to leverage the TED community’s talent and resources to help make a visionary’s dream come true. The award includes $100,000, and the granting of a wish (with the members of TED playing fairy godmother).
The wish from Jamie Oliver was simple: Help in creating a “strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again, and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.” That’s one tall order but this just may be the platform and support he needs to make a dent in this high-profile issue.
The plan, as noted on the TED site:Set up an organization to create a popular movement that will inspire people to change the way they eat. The movement will do this by establishing a network of community kitchens; launching a traveling food theater that will teach kids practical food and cooking skills in an entertaining way and provide basic training for parents and professionals; and bringing millions of people together through an online community to drive the fight against obesity. The grassroots movement must also challenge corporate America to support meaningful programs that will change the culture of junk food.
This challenge will take some time. Initial steps were identified to help carry out the plan and TED members will likely be spending some time over the next year implementing some of these:
- Help to establish the organization, with funding, office space and facilities.
- Find partners to equip and run the community kitchens, and food suppliers to provide the fresh ingredients.
- A partner to build and maintain a fleet of food theatre trucks.
- Education experts, graphic designers, artists and writers to develop and produce creative, fun teaching materials.
- Communications experts to create messaging for the movement.
- Web designers and developers to create and build the website.
- Establish a food range that generates a sustainable income for the movement.
- Corporate partners to invest in cooking and food education for their customers and champion honest food labelling.
Congratulations to Jamie Oliver for the win, a big community thanks to TED for recognizing the chef and for putting it’s considerable resources (both intellect and money) behind such worthwhile causes.
