Posted on 01/29/2012 8:25:36 PM PST by nickcarraway
It was Jamie Oliver’s toughest challenge... getting US youngsters to ditch junk food and eat a healthier diet.
But six months after he convinced an LA school to swap fattening burgers for low-calorie salads, his revamped menu is – literally – being binned.
Hundreds of students at West Adams Preparatory High School, where his hit show Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution was filmed, are refusing to eat his cuisine.
Instead, bins are overflowing with the TV chef’s veg curries, quinoa salads, Thai noodles and wheatbread burgers.
Many youngsters even go without lunch altogether.
Anna Redd, a cookery teacher at the school, where a shocking half of the students are overweight, revealed: “Things were positive at the start but now kids have made it clear to us, ‘This is not what we want.’
“Rather than eat the food that is provided in the canteen, they just throw it away.
“It is so sad to see, because now we have trash cans full of tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli and other vegetables.
“The school wants to bring in changes but the kids just have bad eating habits – and there is not much we can do about it.
“They eat junk food at home and so they expect to eat junk food at school too.
“I don’t know if it is a food addiction but I think it is wrong to blame the school district.
“These things have to start at home. If the parents are giving their kids junk food, how can we expect them to eat healthily at school?”
She said pupils at the school had been keen to take part in the scheme when Jamie was there, but as soon as he left they slipped back into their old eating habits.
Ms Redd added that the chef has been sending monthly boxes of vegetables to help obese diabetes sufferer Sophia Ruvalcaba – but she has not lost any weight since featuring on the programme.
More than three million Americans tuned in to see Jamie’s Food Revolution when it was screened last year.
He faced battles with Ramon Cortines, the superintendent of the Los Angeles United School District, who banned him from the city’s schools. Jamie had his filming permit ripped up and got so upset that he broke down in tears as he begged parents to help him.
He eventually found a loophole which let him into West Adams school. And soon afterwards a ban on junk food and milkshakes was announced.
Jamie set about working with local chefs to introduce radical changes to the lunch menu. But now many of Jamie’s meals are being thrown away before they are even opened and piles of unopened milk cartons are building up.
News of the failure of Jamie’s LA effort comes days after he was hailed for winning a battle against US fast-food giant McDonald’s.
After learning that ammonium hydroxide was being used by the chain to convert fatty beef offcuts into a beef filler for burgers in America, he denounced the “pink slime”. McDonald’s has now ditched the method.
A spokesman for Jamie said he was aware of the challenges at West Adams school and his team was talking to officials there to try to improve the situation.
Anyone surprised about this? Anyone at all?
The problem is that the school administrators are taking a top down approach.
If they’d talk to the kids, explain to the kids what the objectives are and then work with the kids to develop better menus and such, the kids might actually be willing to eat the food.
The kids may not have the perfect diet, but they would be eating better.
One or two meals a week blended with real food might work. An all crap attack won’t. duh!
A socialist busybody Jaimie Oliver takes US taxpayer dollars to push his agenda.
A generation of idiots who don’t know anything more than how to take handouts from the government is ungrateful and throws the tax payers money down the drain.
No one’s nutrition is improved, much money is wasted. Someone got a TV show out of it, someone else got a lot of money from the taxpayer to make unpopular foods destined for the garbage. They were probably friends or donors to the political party for quid pro quo.
This is America’s future. This is America’s demise.
Wow.
The School Food Nazi speaketh, do they even hear the words coming out of their mouths?
“Puckah!”
LOL!
It is none of the freaking government stooge’s business what we, the people, decide to eat.
Jamie, the wall-eyed London busybody, got much worse from the schools in West Virginia if I remember correctly. He had to flee from their scorn along with his tv cameras. This is a man who cooked in the nude until he accidentally set himself on fire.
I don't know of a single Los Angeles Unified School District school that even bakes their own bread. I don't think the issue is the kids, I think the issue is the lazy jerks in the food services. When I saw pre-cooked quinoa go on the bulk foods list for a local distributor, the connection was obvious. Rather than cook the quinoa in spices and flavorings, they're buying pre-cooked bags, microwaving them, and then tossing the bland grain straight atop the bagged salad, along with a couple canned mandarin oranges and calling that a 'Jamie Oliver' salad.
Second major problem are these stupid federal guidelines that require every student on reduced or free meals to take a container of milk. Required. As in there's someone who stands next to the milk case yelling at kids to take the milk or they can't have any food. Expand the guidelines to include fruit juices and water, or just drop the guidelines for beverages.
We've got thousands of 'cooks' in the LA district, and the truth is, they just don't cook. If there was a budget crunch, maybe I could understand it, but food services gets paid a fat fee per meal, they can certainly afford to get staff into the kitchens and start cooking from scratch.
But hey, why should kitchen staff be any different than 'teachers' who instruct via pre-packaged units? Both are offering junk, and it's not surprising that it's not working with the kids.
bump
The kids should be bringing their own lunches, IMO.
At the risk of ticking off a liberal... perhaps the solution to poor eating habits is to get some child labor back on the farm. You tend to appreciate what you grow and for some reason it tastes better when your labor went into it. Worked for us anyway.
Sure, if you’re not buying from the school cafeteria.
But if you are, there would be minimal standards of all kinds, so it is the feds business on that point.
Having said that, it is in the school’s best interest to work with the kids to ensure that the foods that are sold on school grounds are foods the kids will eat.
A lot of public schools administrators are clueless when it comes to kids. There are healthy foods for kids; just make >wholesome pizzas, tacos & enchiladas that kids will actually like & eat. (such foods can be made ‘wholesome’)
Getting kids to drink wholesome-milk is difficult. Maybe package the milk as real> Dinosaur-snot would work. Who knows? Kids seem to like the milk in the form of cheese or on cereal. (chocolate milk: it’s the chocolate & sugar they want.)
A lot public schools would go out of business if they were judged on the success rate. All the problems in our public schools are public knowledge.
I'll bet she didn't say "canteen," which in America is a portable water flask. However the writer probably put the word into her mouth because his audience might not be familiar with the word "cafeteria."
I like quinoa. It isn't very hard to cook. I never knew they made pre-cooked quinoa. But sadly I am not surprised that would would sale it that way. And honestly I wouldn't doubt if school cafeterias are not the only people using it.
Nothing about schools is fed business. Even public schools should be run by local school boards and overseen by the state.
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