After a six episode engagement on ABC, Friday night marks the conclusion of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution.
However, the US is still struggling to get a decent conversation on the state of our food culture off the ground.
The British TV chef came to West Virginia with a clear goal in mind: tackling the complicity of school systems in producing heavy, fattening foods for children to consume during school hours. His approach was based on his success in reforming midday meals in UK schools from processed junk food and limp vegetables to freshly made, organic, veggie-filled feasts for the taste buds. While critics have railed against the high cost of his methods, Greenwich and other areas of England have shown a direct benefit to the students after following Oliver's regimen.
The environment in the US seems ripe for Oliver's message: nutritional screeds such as The Omnivore's Dilemma, How To Cook Everything and In the Defense of Food have topped book lists for the past couple of years and first lady Michelle Obama has made combating childhood obesity her pet issue for the rest of her term in the White House. Still, it's going to be a tough road to hoe. The severity of the problem is documented in the morbidly entertaining Fed Up With School Lunch blog, where one brave teacher eats school lunch along with her students each day. Here are a few sample observations:
The apple was delicious and the garlic bread was good, a little chewy. And the chicken nuggets were "eh". Knowing that they could be only 30% to 50% chicken makes it harder for me to eat them. I'm fixated on the fillers.
So let's get back to what I ate today. Popcorn chicken. After the chili and the meatball sub I had earlier this week (which I thought weren't too bad), I should have seen this coming. I slathered the chicken bits with bbq sauce. When that wasn't enough I randomly squirted ketchup all over them. It got very messy and so did I. It's not that they tasted bad per se. It's just that after I read that chicken nuggets contain roughly 50% chicken (and now I can't find the citation), I struggle trying to get them down. Last week was pretty chicken-heavy (chicken patty and chicken nuggets) and I'm not complaining because I do prefer chicken over beef. It just seems like a lot of the same.
If I created a life-sized collage of me using photos of all school lunches I've eaten, I think my arms would be made of pizza and carrot sticks would be my fingers. One leg would be beef patties and the other chicken. My shoes would be whole wheat buns! A torso of fruit cups with my head and neck composed of chicken nuggets and cheese sandwiches. Tater tot and hot dog belt, pasta for hair, apples and pears for breasts, miscellaneous veggies for facial features and bananas for earrings. I am what I eat!
Considering school lunches feed over 31 million children in the United States, and for low-income students may be the only guaranteed hot meal they eat each day, the situation is dire.
However, in order to spark a true revolution, we must also contend with a uniquely American problem (albeit, a problem that is creeping across borders each day): the culture of convenience. Since many American eaters are divorced from grand food traditions that developed in other nations and the American South, there was an easy in-road for corporations to exploit – America is indeed a "fast-food nation". A large part of the battle is getting communities not only to see unprocessed, fruit and vegetable-based dishes as an option, but to see food culture (not just taking the quickest and cheapest option) as a part of our heritage that needs to be preserved.
In his book Vegan Soul Kitchen, eco-chef and foodie maverick Bryant Terry relates:
For most people, African American and Southern cooking is synonymous with meals organised around fatty meats with overcooked vegetables and fruits playing a minor supporting role. But when we take a step back and remember that – before the widespread industrialisation of food in this country – African Americans living in the South included lots of fresh, nutrient-dense leafy greens, tubers, and fruits in their everyday diets, what I am introducing here is not that much of a stretch. [...]
My grandparents raised their own chickens, kept gardens that produced most of their vegetables, and maintained mini-orchards in their front and backyards. Several of their neighbours did the same. Now the fowl, plots, and fruit trees have disappeared from their South Memphis neighborhood. And many of the denizens of this community are suffering from hypertension, diabetes, and other often preventable, diet-related illnesses. My memory of a "greener" South, as explored in my essay Reclaiming True Grits, reawakened my desire to write this book to help people remember that part of our legacy. Like most Americans, African Americans saw the globalisation of agriculture and industrialisation of food as a good thing. Cheap. Fast. Convenient. It all seemed to make sense. But today, we recognise the fallout from that food system – on our bodies, spirits, cultures, and communities – and it's time now to get back to the land.
The entire United States needs to embark on a taste bud re-education, and an examination of what convenience means. This will not be easy – after all, wrapped up in any conversation about food and health are larger social issues. What types of foods are subsidised and what types are not? Why did it become cheaper to buy vegetables from various places around the world, instead of grow them? What role does big business play in shaping and moulding how society perceives food? (As an aside, the UK has a total ban on junk food advertising during kids TV programmes – no such law currently exists in the US). Class also looms large in this debate – how do we ensure those who have the most food instability and the highest risks of malnutrition are not penalised with cheap freeze-dried and processed fare? A significant first step is what Oliver has done though his television programme – however, to continue the momentum, a multi-prong, community based effort is needed.
