Try as they might, American food cops have thus far failed to compete with their counterparts across the pond. (You’re welcome.) Take Jamie Oliver, Britain’s most notorious celebrity chef, who has launched an ambitious campaign to ostensibly help kids eat healthier. Noble goal as it is, Oliver overreached.
In 2006 Oliver made headlines after a group of moms protested his school-dinners program. “Our kids are being served up disgusting rubbish by the school,” one said of the meager portions of boring food Oliver was feeding the students. So appalled were some parents that they snuck pizza, burgers, and soda to their kids through a school’s fence.
Not every British food wizard agrees with "Naked" Chef Jamie. Take his crusade against affordable chicken. While Oliver wants every Briton to pay more for free-range birds, "Hell’s Kitchen" star Marco Pierre White has slammed him for ignoring the toll his self-righteous and “highly cynical” measures would take on lower-income households.
But Oliver remains unfazed. He admits Britain’s economic downturn could make fast food restaurants more attractive for frugal spenders. His solution? Not to increase their availability, but to make it harder for them to open in the first place.
He’s lobbying the British government to spend over a trillion dollars on "anti-obesity" measures — such as rigorous programs teaching women how to cook — and to appoint a Minister of Food to act as czar over everyone’s diet. Fat, Oliver hyperbolizes, is “a bloody emergency” and will turn into a “horror show.”
We can think of only one horror show on this particular channel. And Jamie — you’re the star!
