With his new ABC reality television series "Food Revolution," Jamie Oliver has shoved a stick right into the hornet's nest that is the public school food system and its dependence on industrial fast food. And while his confrontational, badass attitude earned him early raves for raising awareness about America's often misguided approach to feeding children, critics are starting to question his tactics.

By riding into the heart of America's long-suffering Appalachian region to tell impoverished families that they are killing their children with pizza and singling out the cooks working the line at grade school cafeterias as culpable in the mass murder, is Oliver doing more harm than good?

As Debra Eschmeyer wrote on the food politics blog Civil Eats, Oliver is directing parental anger at school staffs rather than the politicians and bureaucrats who control resources, in her view, the real villains. The Washington Post wrote, “not a word is spoken at 'Food Revolution’s' outset about our culture’s politicization of food – the whole arugula divide, the high cost of eating right, the class issues over portion size, the constant character judgments strewn between a fine meal and the drive-thru.”

While the show’s March 26 premiere, according to Variety, earned the best rating of any Friday 9 p.m. show on ABC in three years, the entertainment industry publication slammed the show, saying a more appropriate title would be “Jamie Oliver’s Fat, Stupid, Grease-Lovin’ Americans.”

Oliver says he's helping

"Humiliating? No, I don't think so at all. Helping? Absolutely," Oliver wrote in an email from his home base in London. "These are good people who, through no fault of their own find themselves in a difficult position purely because no one has ever taught them how to use food in a more cost-effective and nutritious way.

"This is completely not only a problem amongst poorer people but amongst everyone. I know guys who work in the financial industry who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year but they can't cook and they eat worse than anyone in the 'Food Revolution' series," he says.

On March 31, Oliver was handed fresh data to boost his claim that he is an agent for positive change. At the annual conference of the Royal Economic Society meeting at the University of Surrey in England, researchers with Oxford University and the University of Essex presented a study showing the more nutritious lunches Oliver introduced in a South London school district six years ago had significantly improved student test scores and reduced the number of student sick days. The results were most dramatic for children from middle-class homes and least impressive for the poorer students.

"As indicated by the relative fall in absenteeism, it is likely that children's health improved as well," the study states. "This could have long-lasting consequences for the children involved not only through improvement in educational achievements, but also in terms of their life expectancy, quality of life and productive capacity on the labour market." A follow-up study has been commissioned to address the question of why the poorest students benefited the least, or not at all, from the improved nutrition in school lunches.

Oliver is thrilled. "Basically, what they suggest is that, if you feed kids better for those 190 days a year that they're in school, they can get smarter and they don't get sick so much," he says in his email. "So just think what could happen if kids ate better food at school and at home."

Conflicting results to Oliver's work

Oliver may be particularly grateful for his home team support in light of a less flattering survey released the same day by West Virginia University researchers working at the Huntington, W.Va., school where he filmed “Food Revolution.” According to the survey, 77% of the students "hated" Oliver's food, prompting a 9% decrease in the number of students who ate the lunches. Without the sugar-flavored whole milk, milk consumption declined by 25%. And that wasn't the worst news. Under Oliver's program, food costs rose as did staff hours required to prepare and serve the meals. The fat content of the meals rose as well.

These are still the early days of the struggle to change the food served in America's public schools, according to Oliver. He had two months to turn around an entrenched system, only time enough to change a few minds. "People are starting to believe that they can do something about school food and family nutrition," he says. "It's an ongoing process and we still need more money but things are slowly improving.

"It's wrong to point fingers and to say 'These are our worst offenders.' What I hope to do, particularly with the online petition, is to highlight that everywhere in the U.S. is in need of help and that there are people in every city and every county and every state who want to see change in school food and improvements in learning about food and nutrition."

"Food Revolution" doesn't challenge the industrial food industry directly, Oliver acknowledges. "But if more people make the life choice that they're going to learn to cook from fresh, to feed their families better and to make the family weekly budget go further, then that in turn has a knock-on effect."

Oliver is urging people to go to his website where they can sign petitions demanding change in America's school lunch programs.

If they go to ABC's website for "Food Revolution," the first two episodes are available for viewing, and that's where the challenge confronting American parents becomes crystal clear. The episodes are sponsored by Pillsbury's Poppin' Fresh Dough and imbedded in the commercials is a recipe for turning the processed, trans-fat-infused dough into "pizza" with the tag line "Flaky bits of bacon, cheese and praise."

Photos: Jamie Oliver at the Hollywood Farmers Market last year. Credit: Chris Fager.
A scene of "Food Revolution." Credit: ABC

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