Jamie Oliver

I've been a fan of Jamie Oliver for a long time. For those who don't know who he is, he is a British chef, made famous by the food network and others in North America. I have a couple of his books on cooking and have tried many of his recipes and my family really enjoy them.

I was quite fascinated when I read a few years ago that he was trying to change the school meals in the UK. As a consumer of school meals when I was a child in england, they are nothing to write home about and being fed a diet of mushy peas( an English delicacy that I still do not like) and fries, made me really really hate school meals. My parents eventually sent me with brown bag meals, which we packaged up ourselves from home made bread. Jamies crusade seems to have been long and drawn out. I'm still not sure about the outcomes of the school meals revolution in the UK, but I do know he's been in America on a new school meal campaign.

I have been to Huntingdon West Virginia and this is where Jamie Olivers first food revolution went to. I have seen trailers for some of the show's and was really shocked by one, when he went to a classroom and asked the young students what the names of the vegetables and fruits he held up where. Most of the students didn't know.

Its time to change the way we teach our children about food. There are some amazing people out there who are working on change through school gardens and anti obesity campaigns. The school garden movement is a growing tide of change that is for the positive and if more research was done on their impacts and benefits, maybe more money would flow from the top to help more schools achieve their goals in creating a school garden. Teachers would also benefit from this change as money might flow to help them in their own training on how to teach in outdoor classrooms.

Jamie`s current food fight is in California and I await with eagerness how this new revolution to change the school meals in their schools goes. In a state where there are so many documented school gardens, the Edible Schoolyard, being one, it would be sad if this fight goes nowhere.

In the meantime, I invite everyone to watch Jamie Olivers passionate TEDtalk on his food revolution.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIwrV5e6fMY