Maintenance Phase - Jamie Oliver

00:00:00.000 I have no tagline suggestions because all I have is problematic jokes about British people.

00:00:16.380 Because I lived there, I feel like that gives me a license to like be kind of mean.

00:00:21.080 I'm guessing some British listeners will disagree.

00:00:24.920 It's very funny.

00:00:25.940 It's like whenever anybody asks me about like some country I haven't spent much time in like

00:00:29.440 thailand i'm like oh a beautiful country with noble people but if they ask me about britain

00:00:33.920 or denmark i'm like first of all i have this long rant ready that's true i did ask you if i should

00:00:41.020 go to denmark for a work trip and you're like absolutely not that is not something you need

00:00:46.860 in your life keep it moving the minute you asked i was like i i like tapped on my little keyboard

00:00:51.460 i was like okay all caps i'm gonna need all caps for this answer no so but okay does does jamie

00:00:57.780 oliver even have like a catchphrase i was gonna use like one of his like little cooking catch

00:01:02.140 phrases like bam or whatever he's got a few it's less of a catchphrase and more of like a lexicon

00:01:07.560 oh that he'll call things like wicked or okay slamming welcome to maintenance phase the podcast

00:01:14.060 that is wicked slamming oh look at him go we can cut everything before this and make it seem like

00:01:21.760 i knew i knew his little catch words i'm aubrey gordon i'm michael hobbs if you would like to

00:01:26.900 support the show, you can do that at Patreon or you can subscribe through Apple Podcasts. It's

00:01:31.740 the same audio content in both places. Same stuff. Today, Michael. At long last. At long last.

00:01:41.500 Talking about Mr. Jamie Oliver. We are talking about Jamie Oliver and we're particularly talking

00:01:46.400 about his influence in talking about school food and kids diets. Oh yeah. Mike, tell me what you

00:01:52.580 know about jamie oliver he's a tv chef who started with a show called the naked chef 0.70

00:01:58.040 which i genuinely believed was a naked man cooking for a very long time oh tiny baby gay was like i'm

00:02:04.480 listening yeah exactly i was like when exactly is it on in america he became like one of the early 0.56

00:02:12.040 sort of tv chef celebrities he then did a tv series where he was going to reform school they

00:02:20.400 say school dinners which is kind of confusing which i was actually very into i was like i was

00:02:25.680 jamie oliver pilled were you we talked about this before we were recording but like i have kind of

00:02:29.860 a soft spot for jamie oliver because yeah he seems like a genuinely nice guy who is like trying but

00:02:36.160 then i know that since i've kind of stopped paying as much attention to him he's made a series of

00:02:41.000 blunders that are like less defensible but i i don't actually know like the scope and nature of

00:02:46.120 blunders yeah i will say i came in similarly i did not have a soft spot for him mostly just

00:02:52.560 because he was part of that wave of like late 2000s early 2010s like the problem is fat kids

00:03:02.200 100 kind of media and as someone who at that point was like a fat person in their 20s that

00:03:09.160 felt too close to home for me and then you went on a film tour in the uk and people in the signing

00:03:15.100 line where like you should do an episode on jamie oliver 200 times i told people i was thinking of

00:03:21.140 doing an episode on jamie oliver and i used the sign lines to like ask people okay like the closest

00:03:27.140 you got to defenders was i guess his heart's in the right place and for the most part people were

00:03:31.980 just like fuck this dude yeah it really felt like when you would talk to people from the uk about 0.95

00:03:39.600 james corden before the balthazar thing happened yeah or me talking about elon musk at any period 0.99

00:03:45.740 up until the present yeah the world has finally caught up to you michael this is becoming a

00:03:51.700 california high-speed rail podcast immediately this was always in danger of becoming such a thing

00:03:58.180 so jamie oliver was born in 1975 he was born and raised in essex his parents ran a pub

00:04:07.120 he went to a grammar school which is like a sort of middle classy thing to do right it's so

00:04:13.640 confusing there are so many kinds of schools and there's like public and private but they mean

00:04:18.960 different things he starts off as a pastry chef at neil street restaurant and over time moves on

00:04:24.280 to become the sous chef at the super acclaimed river cafe are you familiar with the river cafe

00:04:31.140 This is in London? Oh, no, I had no money. And I ate out of the sales bin at Sainsbury's on my way

00:04:38.380 home because they had sandwiches for 49p. Did you get the smoked salmon one? Why don't we have

00:04:42.900 smoked salmon sandwiches here? It's at the River Cafe that he makes his first TV appearance in a

00:04:49.820 show called Christmas at the River Cafe. He sort of pops on screen is sort of the way that this

00:04:55.740 story gets told, which like, I believe it. Yeah, he's a charismatic dude, right? Yeah,

00:04:59.840 That leads to his first TV series, the aforementioned The Naked Chef, which premiered in

00:05:04.920 1999. In 2005, he launches a campaign called Feed Me Better, which is his campaign to change

00:05:14.140 school children's meals. As a result of that, they have a Channel 4 viewers poll and they name him

00:05:21.420 the most inspiring political figure of 2005. Political figure, that's a transformation.

00:05:26.820 Right? I think there's a little bit of a sort of Dr. Oz leaning story here of like, by all

00:05:33.920 accounts, he's a very good chef. Yeah. And he gets into hot water when he veers away from that thing.

00:05:39.480 Yeah. And also he's very likable. He has the sort of the combination of fine dining and then this

00:05:43.920 every man quality. Right. Since the sort of start of his career, he has published 32 cookbooks.

00:05:51.040 oh wow he has presented 44 tv shows of more than one episode and 19 single episode specials he's

00:06:00.220 almost like a twitch streamer at that point he's just on he's on he has also faced in that time

00:06:06.960 more and more critique in addition to getting more and more successful he's faced more and more

00:06:11.440 critique when i started this episode i texted you and was like hey i think i'm gonna do jamie

00:06:15.720 oliver and you were like oh cool influencer episode i was like yeah it'll be like a light

00:06:19.100 little influencer episode okay no it was like Gwyneth Paltrow volumes of media that have been

00:06:27.680 written about this guy think pieces op-eds so much ink has been spilled over every little thing that

00:06:35.380 Jamie Oliver does some of it I think like is really really on point and some of it I think is

00:06:41.360 like as you would say we're in bitch-eating crackers territory with some of it yeah this 0.99

00:06:45.040 is always the thing with like British influencers is that like some of them are really garbage 1.00

00:06:48.920 But then on the other hand, they have a super garbage media environment. 0.99

00:06:52.480 And so it's hard to separate, like, does this person suck or does the coverage of them suck? 1.00

00:06:57.780 Yes. 0.98

00:06:58.440 So we're going to do a little rundown of some of the things that he has been criticized for.

00:07:03.820 Okay.

00:07:04.480 And then we're going to dig into our school dinners stuff. 0.99

00:07:08.360 One of his big critiques is he's been criticized many times for being a hypocrite. 0.97

00:07:13.340 He had a whole show about the conditions in which chickens are raised and produced. 0.78

00:07:18.920 After making the show about chickens, he then signed a multi-million pound deal with Sainsbury's, who at that point did not conform to the RSPCA standards at the time.

00:07:29.620 In 2015, he worked with the UN Environment Program as a quote-unquote environmental champion.

00:07:36.300 Two years later, he signed a five million pound deal with Shell.

00:07:43.640 Okay. Again, it's money. That's quite bad.

00:07:48.460 There are also plenty of complaints about racism, colonialism, and appropriation in his recipes.

00:07:55.920 This is from a piece on CNN.

00:08:00.420 It is a brick.

00:08:02.360 In the Sunday Times interview, Oliver acknowledged that his Empire Roast Chicken,

00:08:06.880 a chicken recipe involving coriander, turmeric, garam masala, and cumin,

00:08:10.520 would no longer be appropriate today.

00:08:12.600 In the episode titled Empire Roast Chicken, Bombay Roasties, and Amazing Indian Gravy,

00:08:17.280 Oliver set out to celebrate what he called our Indian love affair

00:08:20.740 by making a full-on collision between beautiful British roast dinners and gutsy Asian spices.

00:08:26.380 Oliver also celebrated the trade routes he said led to Indian spices making their way into British dishes

00:08:31.580 and which he used in his lemon-scented roast empire-style tandoori chicken.

00:08:36.680 Toward the end of the episode, while carving the chicken, Oliver said,

00:08:39.940 this is empire food, you can use your hands, and then raised a toast to the empire

00:08:44.680 while clinking beers with members of his camera crews.

00:08:48.920 Although originally billed in the episode

00:08:50.540 as lemon-scented roast empire-style tandoori chicken,

00:08:53.860 the recipe has now been renamed on Oliver's website

00:08:56.260 as Spiced Roast Chicken.

00:08:58.660 Ooh, this didn't seem that bad to me

00:09:01.980 until we got to the, let's toast to the empire.

00:09:04.880 Right, right, right.

00:09:06.320 There are so many versions of this kind of thing

00:09:10.980 that have happened.

00:09:12.160 There have also been critiques,

00:09:14.220 and perhaps the most pervasive critique of jamie oliver is around class and classism

00:09:18.960 one of the big if you sort of talk to people about jamie oliver one of the big things that

00:09:24.300 comes up is they're like he's charging eight pounds for beans on toast okay for u.s listeners

00:09:29.480 who are unfamiliar with beans on toast it's literally canned baked beans on a piece for

00:09:34.160 those of you who are unfamiliar with this term it it is exactly what it sounds like his version

00:09:39.460 is definitely dressed up. It's on ciabatta. There are cherry tomatoes. There's basil and arugula

00:09:44.620 and balsamic and all kinds of stuff, but it's still beans on toast. He has since sort of

00:09:48.860 reconsidered, but he's also kind of doubled down. He tells the BBC, quote, I should have been

00:09:53.900 brighter. Heinz came to us and offered 15,000 pounds for us to put something cool made with

00:09:59.660 baked beans on the menu. Oh, it's more money stuff, Jamie. That funds one student for a whole

00:10:05.860 year am i going to do it of course i am oh my god he's doing the speech from schindler's list

00:10:12.300 but also it's such a weird defense because like whatever if you don't want to buy the eight dollar 0.87

00:10:18.240 fucking beans on toast don't buy the eight dollar beans on toast right these sorts of things don't 0.99

00:10:21.220 really bother me that much it just seems like rich people dumb shit and i'm a cheapskate so i 1.00

00:10:25.480 would just never go to this restaurant anyway this is where we start to get into bitch eating 0.99

00:10:28.700 crackers territory i'm like why are you monitoring his menus i don't really care i don't give a 0.98

00:10:34.140 shit but i will say the classism stuff also sort of seeps into how he shows up politically in january 0.66

00:10:41.820 of 2022 he stages this protest outside of number 10 downing street because of what he calls the 0.98

00:10:47.800 government's u-turn on obesity policies quote unquote i remember this what do you remember

00:10:53.820 about this protest michael wasn't this a whole uh boris johnson getting covid and being like if i

00:11:00.720 wasn't so fat i wouldn't have had this problem or something and then they were gonna do a bunch of

00:11:05.480 stuff and they just didn't do it or something sort of i feel like you're being nice and i'm

00:11:09.640 totally wrong but you don't want to say that you're not totally wrong you're not totally wrong

00:11:12.460 so boris johnson gets covid he has all of this messaging about how like this would have happened

00:11:17.120 if i weren't fat so therefore we have to have a quote-unquote obesity plan jamie oliver in january

00:11:24.140 2022 the government he says is doing a quote unquote u-turn on their obesity policies and

00:11:31.380 the thing that he is mad about the policy in question is that the government had pledged to

00:11:37.140 restrict higher calorie foods in supermarket promotions of buy one get one free items okay

00:11:44.800 he's he's mad that people are getting high calorie foods for free okay so he stages this big protest

00:11:52.180 outside 10 Downing Street. And the theme for the protest is, this policy is a total eaten mess.

00:12:05.640 That's actually not that bad. Sorry, pardon me, excuse me. Look, I'm a man with a podcast that

00:12:12.000 has never had a good tagline. If there's one thing I know, it's wordplay. You're like, wow,

00:12:16.860 he really did a thing that we have not delivered that we've not achieved so here's i'm gonna send 0.98

00:12:22.800 you a little screen grab from sky news of this protest the fuck oh my god so it's jamie oliver 0.96

00:12:30.240 in the front of a crowd and he's holding an eaten mess yeah a giant like trifle dish full of eaten 0.99

00:12:37.680 mess but then one of the signs that somebody has in the background is give peas a chance which is

00:12:42.660 also good there's boris keep your promise that one's bad there are a number of signs when you

00:12:49.320 sort of zoom out on these pictures of like this policy is an hashtag eaten mess and they all have

00:12:57.000 hashtag yeah the hashtag doesn't work if it's not if it's you're writing it in real life you can't

00:13:01.700 you can't click on a hashtag in addition to and sort of overlaying this classism critique

00:13:07.040 are some genuine sort of reportings about what I would consider to be wage theft.

00:13:12.220 Oh, his restaurant chain, Jamie's Italian, which was sort of a high street

00:13:16.880 chain closed in the 2010s with debts of 83 million pounds. And he gets big headlines at

00:13:25.660 the time for closing his restaurants without having paid his staff. Oh, that's bad. That's

00:13:31.880 real bad they lay off 44 employees at christmas the last two sort of general critiques oh my god

00:13:39.660 mike this has been the longest yeah i know the longest table so we're still table setting this

00:13:44.640 is so i texted you this morning and was like oops i need another hour and then i was like

00:13:48.140 oops i need another half hour it's because i was sorting through that like just like 0.54

00:13:52.960 dozens and dozens and dozens of these stories being like and he sucks for this on top of all

00:13:59.780 of that he's kind of cringe we we finally get to people's real beef with this person in 2012 this 0.99

00:14:10.220 is so fucking funny mike it's not like a like every corporate restaurant chain has shit like 0.93

00:14:17.460 this where they're like famously at chick-fil-a for example if someone says thank you you don't 0.97

00:14:23.460 say you're welcome if they ask you for something you don't say no problem you just say it's my

00:14:28.800 pleasure really yes absolutely oh i've never been to chick-fil-a oh look at you i don't think we

00:14:33.740 have it in seattle we have one in oregon and i went one time and then i was like sorry this is

00:14:38.820 the reason that people are so worked up about like oh man i love gay people but that chicken

00:14:43.460 is so good i'm like it's a fast food chicken sandwich especially in a world of popeye's

00:14:49.560 chicken sandwiches get out of town so in 2012 a tweet goes up it gets uh picked up by media

00:14:57.120 that is allegedly a list of words that servers at jamie oliver's restaurants are supposedly

00:15:05.400 required to use okay i am sending you a link to a piece from eater okay that has the list in it

00:15:14.520 oh man okay it says servers at jamie oliver restaurants told to use words like scrummy

00:15:19.940 slamming wicked i saw this list of words and i was like immediately transported to the like

00:15:26.180 pieces of flair scene yeah totally if you're gonna subject people to this pay them like a hundred

00:15:32.320 thousand dollars a year oh god what i just noticed the third entry on this list pimp

00:15:37.300 this food is pimp yeah it says it's just a list it says melted mouth fresh pimp juicy legendary

00:15:48.520 messy magic dollop whatever silky wicked radical treasure it could not be more 2000s if it

00:15:58.060 i know exactly remember when the word deadly was going around as like cool like oh that's deadly

00:16:04.180 the new album is deadly i was trying to make malignant happen for a while like that thing

00:16:09.040 is malignant i'm so mad that it never caught on anyway it's never too late it's never too late

00:16:15.460 One of the things that is cut off from this list are some other phrases, including proper rustic.

00:16:21.640 Oh, yeah, that's hella artisanal.

00:16:24.120 That's homemade, no cap, for real, for real.

00:16:27.160 Mega is on the list.

00:16:29.300 And so is scrummy.

00:16:31.900 Yeah, that's something British people say, even though it sounds like an STD. 1.00

00:16:35.040 Boy, oh fuck. 1.00

00:16:35.980 This is like calling it crimbo. 1.00

00:16:38.000 Not Christmas, crimbo.

00:16:39.560 What's happening here? 0.88

00:16:40.680 What are you guys doing?

00:16:41.360 You know what I've started to spot in the wild lately is unforge.

00:16:45.480 Oh, I can't make it on Thursday, unforge.

00:16:47.600 You really saved yourself a lot of time by shortening that.

00:16:51.680 I mean, I think the headline about all of the Jamie Oliver stuff is he is a polarizing dude.

00:16:57.240 Yes.

00:16:57.520 People really love him or they really hate him.

00:17:00.580 This honestly just seems kind of like standard to me.

00:17:03.780 Like he sort of becomes famous as this kind of every man, working class guy making fancy food.

00:17:09.280 And then eventually he becomes like a multimillionaire and a giant empire.

00:17:13.300 And of course, that's going to attract scrutiny.

00:17:14.900 yes and like most public figures and most corporations do not hold up to scrutiny i think

00:17:20.100 you're in a similar place that i was at this point in the research you're taking me on a journey 0.86

00:17:23.540 none of them are get this guy off our tvs immediately kind of right shit necessarily

00:17:28.740 right right it's a tale as old as time that like dudes like this get to make big mistakes that

00:17:36.300 would absolutely end the careers of people who had less power and less privilege than him and yet

00:17:42.960 he just gets more money he just gets more famous right like all of these things just sort of keep

00:17:47.680 accruing and accruing and accruing right question how does he generally deal with these things

00:17:53.460 because of course people are going to fuck up as public figures whatever does he just like 0.95

00:17:57.060 apologize like yeah i shouldn't have done the empire toast it was fucking cringe i'm really 0.95

00:18:00.520 sorry or is he like weird about like pushing back against his critics and all this kind of stuff he 0.75

00:18:04.500 gets really defensive and i think that's part of what sets people off yeah there's a quote that he

00:18:08.880 gives at one point where he's like sometimes i think it would actually be easier to be somebody 0.94

00:18:12.460 like gordon ramsey whose persona is like a miserable bastard i think he's correct about 0.89

00:18:19.220 that honestly i think he's right but he's saying it after he's talking about like wage theft yeah 0.93

00:18:25.360 after he's like he's using it as a defense yeah and you're like i think you're right but i don't

00:18:30.180 think that's the main issue yeah so those are the general critiques of jamie oliver we're about to

00:18:36.580 dive in to jamie's school dinners and jamie's ministry of food his two uk shows about feeding

00:18:44.100 kids both of which i've seen you've seen both of them yeah back in my jamie oliver days i mean this

00:18:48.520 would have been like more than 10 years ago though i mean i saw him when they when they aired i'll 0.80

00:18:51.580 tell you what i have not because that shit has been scrubbed from the internet wait really even 0.94

00:18:57.380 if you have a vpn even if you're willing to pay for it even if even if you can find little clips 0.96

00:19:03.000 but you cannot find the whole shows it's wild that and plandemic are the

00:19:06.900 that are scrubbed on the internet plandemic you can get at their website it's actually

00:19:13.040 the easiest thing to get you just can't get on youtube no way i want to sort of take you through

00:19:18.520 a little bit of the genesis of school meals in the uk and sort of how they like what the policies

00:19:24.200 around those have looked like primary school like just as education isn't made mandatory in the uk

00:19:32.000 until 1870. It was not uncommon at that point for students to go to school underfed or just

00:19:38.720 unfed entirely, particularly poor and working class kids. By 1880, this becomes enough of a

00:19:46.520 known problem that they actually start piloting free school meals. And the first free school

00:19:51.840 meals are served to poor folks and students in Bradford. The meal is just straight up porridge.

00:19:58.540 that's oatmeal and bread okay the cost was limited to one penny per student according to the

00:20:07.060 independent in today's money that'd be about 37 pence by 1906 a liberal government passed

00:20:13.720 the education provision of meals act which allowed local governments to serve free school meals

00:20:20.440 most of them ultimately did not provide those free meals and by the start of world war ii

00:20:25.980 you know, decades later, only half of local schools in the UK offered free school meals.

00:20:32.480 Again, this is just like allowing people to do it should they so choose. And many of them do not so

00:20:37.640 choose. In 1944, a new law was passed requiring schools to feed all children, not just low income

00:20:44.540 kids, but like all kids. They also had nutrition standards that required them to provide 40% of the

00:20:50.940 kids daily protein and 33 of their daily calories that usually looked like steak to veg and a 0.80

00:20:58.980 rhubarb crumble which sounds so fucking good yeah we got hamburger and fries for a dollar 25 we got 0.51

00:21:04.800 tater tot tuesdays okay i remember tater tots too i have like not eaten tater tots since what that's 0.87

00:21:10.520 such a like school food for me like in my mind turkey tetrazzini and tater tots are like school

00:21:16.500 food and cannot be consumed elsewhere turkey tetrazini i've never seen that on a menu anywhere

00:21:22.680 else in my entire life i met there are a couple of foods i met for the first time in college we

00:21:27.000 did not have turkey tetrazini at school so i saw that for the first time at college and i was like 0.98

00:21:31.180 what the fuck is this fancy ass name for this goopy ass dude it's like prison food it is goop 0.98

00:21:36.140 midwest-y food yeah the other thing i met for the first time at college was i went through there was 1.00

00:21:40.880 like a little sandwich bar you know there's like all the savory stuff and then also the sweet stuff

00:21:45.040 for making sandwiches and i was like guys somebody really fucked up they put some marshmallow fluff 0.90

00:21:50.440 out oh i was going to school in new england and they were like it's a fluffernutter and i was 0.92

00:21:53.700 like what are you talking about and i absolutely thought that people were pranking me that they

00:21:58.320 went to school with peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich dude i still think that's a prank

00:22:02.700 candy sandwich i feel like it's something like rainbow parties where it's something that like

00:22:06.040 there's a name for it but nobody's ever actually done it and like nothing will convince me

00:22:11.020 otherwise in 1971 margaret thatcher is around she removed free milk from schools this is sort 0.98

00:22:20.560 of the beginning of the erosion of the school lunch program just a fucking nightmare of a person 0.91

00:22:25.500 so she gets this nickname in the press that is thatcher the milk snatcher it is fully just like 0.98

00:22:32.480 taking fucking milk away from poor children yes it's like cartoon evil by 1980 thatcher passes 0.89

00:22:39.020 her education act which ended the requirement to provide school meals of course from here on out 0.99

00:22:47.040 only kids whose parents were on benefits or income supplements qualified for school meals

00:22:53.240 of course that is a really really low income threshold and also it stigmatizes the kids

00:22:59.640 because if it's only the poor kids like it basically announces to all of your classmates

00:23:03.320 that you are the poor kid who doesn't have to pay for school lunch and actually they later pilot

00:23:08.000 like within the last i don't know 15 years they piloted a free school lunch program again in the

00:23:13.140 uk and they found that uptake of school lunches was higher amongst students in all income brackets

00:23:20.280 when it was free for everyone there's also there's something this comes up in america too

00:23:24.800 where it's there's something so fucking weird about this thing where we are providing children 0.62

00:23:29.080 with free education to the tune of billions of dollars and then you're like these freeloaders 0.85

00:23:34.860 want a lunch yeah and then it's like oh but feeding them is like where we draw the line and 0.98

00:23:39.120 they have to fucking pay for it and it's like it's so it's like why like why is this the fucking hill 0.93

00:23:43.520 we want to die like we don't charge kids to ride the school bus so in 1986 the social security act 0.99

00:23:50.680 passes that may seem unrelated but because meals school meals are now means tested right and like

00:23:57.840 tied to an income level and a level of benefits they're cutting people off of benefits which

00:24:02.800 means that the kids of those people are losing access to free school meals of course so as a

00:24:08.760 result of this social security act half a million kids from low-income families lost access to free

00:24:15.360 school meals the thing is you've stacked the deck because now compared to margaret thatcher jamie

00:24:19.620 oliver seems fine he hasn't hasn't taken food from millions of children he's not a political

00:24:26.600 super villain yeah the uh the wage theft stuff doesn't seem so bad now without that national

00:24:31.480 mandate to provides free meals the systems around food shifted really dramatically throughout the

00:24:38.840 1980s and 90s in britain schools aren't funded the way that they need to be at any point in this

00:24:44.520 certainly not school food programs so there's kind of a race to the bottom price wise that happens

00:24:49.980 right where schools are like oh fuck our federal mandate went away which means that some amount of 0.99

00:24:54.540 federal funding went away which means we got to get this shit on the cheap right and this is also 0.99

00:24:59.240 when a famed star slash villain depending on who you ask of uk school food comes around the turkey 0.98

00:25:07.100 twizzler oh god yes this was a big thing in the show this was a big thing in the show we'll talk

00:25:13.580 about the turkey twizzler in a minute oh my god do you know what i remember about the west virginia

00:25:18.200 one the version of this that he did in america what there there was a whole thing where it was

00:25:21.720 like kids were bringing lunchables to school but the show had to bleep the word lunchable yeah i 0.92

00:25:28.000 don't know what the legality is or if they were just like two chicken shit but it was like jamie 0.99

00:25:31.460 went on this big long rant about like kids bringing fucking lunchables to school because 0.99

00:25:35.440 they're so unhealthy but it was like they're bringing to school but you could tell he was 0.99

00:25:39.380 saying lunchable they replaced a bunch of it with packed lunch oh really as a person who just

00:25:43.680 just watched it they dubbed it there is such funny adr in the u.s one it's so funny that's

00:25:49.320 like remember when you used to watch die hard on tv and it would be like it would be like yippee

00:25:54.220 terrible person melon farmers yeah by this point in the early 2000s nutritional standards for

00:26:01.880 school meals in the uk have been pretty well decimated right they're not non-existent but

00:26:06.680 they are a shell of their former selves that's when jamie's school dinners premieres jamie's

00:26:13.200 school dinners is a four episode docuseries that airs on the bbc in early 2005 in february and

00:26:20.740 March of 2005. It is set at Kidbrook Comprehensive School in Greenwich, which is a borough of London.

00:26:28.280 Comprehensive schools are sort of like US public schools. The daily budget for students at Kidbrook

00:26:34.620 was 37 pence per child per day. Adjusted for inflation, that is functionally the same

00:26:42.980 budget as those 1880s meals in Bradford. He gets into the schools, he does this sort of

00:26:49.220 song and dance that he ends up doing at several other schools this is part of the u.s one as well

00:26:54.480 he revamps the school menu he has a day where the existing school menu goes head to head with his

00:27:00.960 new healthy menu right and all the kids pick the foods they know oh shucks and he's like okay well

00:27:06.780 then we just have to keep going we got to make even better healthy quote-unquote healthy food

00:27:10.460 weirdly almost every meal that i see him serve in these clips and includes like a green salad

00:27:18.760 with plain vinaigrette as one of the options and i'm like buddy in what world did you think

00:27:24.000 six-year-olds were gonna be like yum yum eat it up get them some like carrots or something like

00:27:28.720 some like nice roasted veggies you could do so make a stir fry that has vegetables in it with

00:27:34.280 a good sauce like there's a bunch of ways to do this a like french style lightly dressed

00:27:41.280 bitter green salad is like maybe not the like easy entry point i'm a 40 year old man and i i

00:27:47.660 would skip that so one of the most famous images that comes out of this is not only of students

00:27:55.620 sort of rebelling against the menu but of parents i'm sending you a picture oh i know what this is

00:28:01.280 gonna be you do i do because this is such a big deal in the british media yeah yeah yeah it is 0.96

00:28:08.160 this is this fucked up thing where like parents would pass their kids candy bars like through 0.93

00:28:15.380 the school fence yeah people report different things this one appears to be burgers people 0.99

00:28:20.120 say other passing and chips okay whatever it is it's like foods that those kids shouldn't be

00:28:25.220 having to the point that there are like daily mail pieces about the woman who is foregrounded

00:28:30.360 the mom okay in this picture being like now her kids are fat now what and you're like oh my god

00:28:36.580 if parents want to send their kids to school with whatever food they have that honestly seems fine

00:28:42.140 to me like whatever but it it's like if kids are in your care you should be feeding them healthy

00:28:46.640 stuff that's not fucking deranged but it's weird that these became stories like i i feel like the

00:28:51.620 the right-wing media was like really against him like doing this in this way that like how dare 0.76

00:28:57.120 this celebrity medal but it's also like he's trying to get kids to eat fruits and vegetables 0.86

00:29:00.580 are you really fucking against this i think another thing that happened in jamie's school 0.87

00:29:05.000 dinners and this also happens in the u.s version he is dramatically increasing the workload of 0.97

00:29:11.500 school cooks and then sort of characterizing them as sticks in the mud and or lazy yeah they object 0.98

00:29:18.840 so strenuously that some of them threaten to resign to be fair having some fucking reality 0.98

00:29:24.200 show person coming in and fucking cameras in my job yeah i feel like i would also rebel against 0.96

00:29:28.660 this 100 and it's like some dude with a bunch of money telling you without a bunch of money and 0.97

00:29:34.520 resources how to fucking do it yeah you'd be like give me a break dude get out of town it also shows

00:29:39.460 that the extent to which these problems are so entrenched that even somebody with the clout of 0.98

00:29:45.520 jamie oliver can't really come in and fix them right because on some level yeah you want to be

00:29:49.540 feeding the kids healthier food but it's really not a problem of like the lunch ladies being better 0.91

00:29:53.840 it's like a much broader problem of like they should be hiring more lunch ladies and having

00:29:58.340 different training and it's like you just can't solve this stuff by berating people in like the

00:30:03.400 school kitchen can you solve it with a boot camp for school cooks run by the catering division of

00:30:09.260 the british army is that what they did in the show they bring in the catering division of the british

00:30:14.000 army to show them how to cook large amounts of food efficiently as i learned this i was like

00:30:20.900 ah yes the famously delectable food of the army of the british army

00:30:25.420 health first now i get why this was taken off the internet this is really bad i i i do not 0.91

00:30:34.840 remember all of this like problematic shit probably because i was really problematic back

00:30:38.800 then sure well so here's the other thing and they really don't like they sort of acknowledge it 0.98

00:30:44.800 in the shows themselves but they never really dig in on it he just fucking explodes the budget 0.99

00:30:51.800 oh right of course he just blows the fuck he's not making these meals for 37 pence he's just not 0.99

00:30:58.080 right he's making much more expensive foods and is working folks really hard without any additional 0.99

00:31:05.080 extra staff or pay and then he's like look how easy it is and people are like i'm tired i'm not 0.99

00:31:11.100 getting paid more and we don't have the money for this shit yeah and that's the whole fucking point 0.98

00:31:14.680 is that people would be doing better meals if they had the resources you can't just come in and be 0.99

00:31:18.900 Like, you should make better meals without the resources to match.

00:31:23.400 As part of the show, one of the things that happens on the show is that he confronts a dude from one of the nation's largest distributors of school foods.

00:31:32.360 It's called Scholarest or Scholarest.

00:31:34.940 They're the ones who make turkey Twizzlers.

00:31:37.220 A turkey Twizzler is like a chicken nugget kind of thing.

00:31:39.800 But instead of being in boot or oval shape, it is in a corkscrew sort of shape.

00:31:45.600 It looks like a little pig's tail.

00:31:46.800 it is a mainstay of uk school meals at this point yeah it's like a a deep fried breaded

00:31:53.520 like turkey thing turkey thing it is worth noting that turkey twizzlers are a distinctly

00:31:57.900 classed food in the uk i would think about for a u.s analog i might think about mountain dew

00:32:04.280 oh is that classed if you say mountain dew there's like a gender there's a race there's a class there's

00:32:08.900 like a kind of person that comes up really is there i was not aware of this mountain dew at 0.98

00:32:12.460 do you not think about this holy shit i used to drink like three mountain dews a day 0.99

00:32:15.740 so are they from are they from five foot four gay men is that the way that they're 0.99

00:32:20.420 no i mean i think mountain dew is often uh used in like political cartoons and shit like that to 0.99

00:32:25.580 denote like a stupid poor person as a member of the drinking mountain dew community 0.99

00:32:30.560 wow my people the response for the company is really funny and silly it's always fascinating 1.00

00:32:38.680 to me when terrible actors appropriate anti-diet rhetoric or sort of like wind up using it the

00:32:45.480 The company said in a statement, quote, we believe that there is no one food that is bad for you and it is the balance of food you eat that makes for a good or bad diet.

00:32:53.860 Oh, I've seen this.

00:32:54.920 They're doing sort of like an all foods fit sort of approach.

00:32:58.920 Hashtag all foods matter.

00:33:00.060 Here, I'm going to send you a little example of the way that people were talking about turkey Twizzlers in the media following this show.

00:33:09.880 Okay, it says one third turkey, two thirds Twizzler.

00:33:13.540 The product contains turkey, 34%, water, pork fat, rusk, coating, and then it lists like 4,000 fucking ingredients, vegetable oil, turkey skin, salt, wheat flour, dextrose stabilizer, mustard, yeast extract, antioxidants, hey, it's good for you, herb extract, spice extract, and color. 0.99

00:33:35.900 So it's just like a bunch of shit. 0.99

00:33:37.640 It's like this list of ingredients is probably like, I don't know, 25 things. 0.99

00:33:41.540 This appears in like every article about turkey Twizzlers at the time.

00:33:47.240 People are just like, get a load of this list of ingredients.

00:33:50.180 And it is doing this really facile, really common critique of foods at the time.

00:33:55.740 This is sort of the quote unquote, Franken foods era, right?

00:33:59.480 It's easy to go.

00:34:00.980 These are scientific and therefore sort of foreign sounding names.

00:34:06.020 The implication of stuff like this is that

00:34:09.000 if you don't recognize the name of an ingredient it is inherently sinister right and also harmful

00:34:15.020 to your health right yeah but there's not any real analysis of like this thing is in it at this

00:34:21.200 quantity which is known to have these effects like people are not doing that they're just like 0.99

00:34:25.100 look at this fucking load of shit yeah also the thing is when you have to feed kids for fucking 0.97

00:34:29.980 37p right you're gonna have food with a bunch of like fillers in it yeah this is the output of like 1.00

00:34:36.080 the choices you've made politically so the company that makes turkey twizzlers ends up first

00:34:42.300 cutting the fat content in turkey they're like okay okay okay we'll make them lower fat which

00:34:47.340 is like a very 2000s thing right yeah there's a quote from the managing director that i'm like 0.99

00:34:53.140 you're a piece of shit who runs a giant food company but also you're not wrong in this one 0.96

00:34:58.040 instant i'm gonna send it to you the then managing director david joel insisted at the time that the 1.00

00:35:04.260 company had been unfairly treated. Turkey is the least fatty of all meats, he said. The new

00:35:09.600 Twizzlers have only a third of the fat level of the average pork sausage. Yet you don't hear Jamie

00:35:15.300 Oliver telling people not to eat sausages. This is true. That's like a fair point. That is a fair

00:35:20.920 point, right? Like pork sausages, a real cornerstone of British cuisine, right? Pork sausages would

00:35:26.460 have been served in his parents' pub, right? Those are like okay foods, right? And Jamie Oliver is

00:35:31.220 not telling people not to eat sausage. And in fact, in a number of these schools, he goes in

00:35:35.940 and he's like in the US when he goes, Oh, they're having pizza for breakfast. And he says at one

00:35:41.760 point, it's not so much what's in the pizza. It's the fact that it's pizza for breakfast. It's

00:35:48.180 sending all the wrong signals. Okay. And then he goes in and makes a meal. And one of the first

00:35:52.760 things that he makes is pasta with red sauce and cheese. So basically pizza, pizza with boiling

00:35:59.280 water instead of an oven right yeah he's doing this sort of very 2000s and 2010s thing of like

00:36:07.220 we gotta handle the number of fat kids we there have to be fewer fat kids therefore just throw 0.99

00:36:14.500 shit at the wall and the shit to throw at the wall is the stuff that feels right to you yeah 1.00

00:36:19.560 it feels right to you that these sort of like foods that are processed in this way and that 0.99

00:36:25.660 have this long list of ingredients are worse than a pork sausage which is also very processed i mean

00:36:33.000 the thing is i'm actually like i don't think kids should be eating chicken nuggets which is basically

00:36:37.280 what turkey twizzlers are like at school i also don't think they should have like chocolate milk

00:36:40.960 at school i think they should be getting like very nutritious well-made meals i also feel like

00:36:46.120 another like very early 2000s thing about this is that there was this fantasy that you could solve

00:36:51.060 these problems without investing extra money yeah i feel like the school lunches problem is

00:36:55.400 mostly a problem of money this is the credit where credit's due section this show really leads to

00:37:02.140 some real change in the uk on the show he meets with tony blair who's the prime minister at the

00:37:07.460 time he secures 280 million pounds for school meals that is genuinely a huge deal it's really

00:37:14.780 good. It shouldn't take a celebrity having a TV show to do it. Yes. But it happened. And that's

00:37:21.280 a good that's a net benefit. Right. It also leads to the establishment of a national children's food

00:37:27.700 trust, which was operational from 2005 until 2017. There's also some conflicting data on the impact

00:37:35.700 of Jamie's school dinners and that whole sort of shift. OK, there is one study over the course of

00:37:42.180 a year that shows that more students, like slightly more students, it's like five or six

00:37:46.780 percent more students get kicked into a higher grade bracket, right? Like they're sort of like

00:37:51.800 generally scoring higher than they were, but it's small. And then there's a bunch of other studies

00:37:57.540 that show some backsliding, like almost immediately. So the effects on student performance,

00:38:03.640 I think are disputed and murky at best. One of the great finds in my research on Jamie's school

00:38:10.820 dinners and ministry of food was a phenomenal piece from a former student at kid brook that

00:38:20.420 was published in eater london okay who was like i was at this school when this show was filmed

00:38:27.400 okay one of the famous sort of scenes in the show is him showing vegetables to kids and them

00:38:34.620 guessing incorrectly as to what those vegetables are and he's like oh no i remember that yeah

00:38:40.720 Peter Pease says, quote, in another memorable piece of sneering superiority, friends of mine were pulled into a classroom and asked to identify vegetables.

00:38:50.840 What the editors decided to air was a blooper reel of misidentified broccoli edited together to make it look like the burger fiends had never seen fresh food.

00:39:01.400 the reality was that there were students in the room who identified produce correctly

00:39:06.120 but in most cases these examples were not included in the montage which aired which

00:39:10.660 like of course right yeah yeah yeah yeah that's where they like where they walk around a mall or

00:39:15.380 whatever they ask americans like can you find iraq on a map yeah and it's like they only use 0.98

00:39:19.680 the times that people can't do it to be like oh mary look how dumb americans are like it is very 0.99

00:39:24.240 standard issue reality tv antics and sort of cherry picking of like the most dramatic shit 0.98

00:39:29.520 I don't want to like overblow it on that front, but it's stepping into a context of classism that is reinforcing really regressive, shitty ideas about poor and working class people. 0.91

00:39:43.560 This is such an amazing example of how, like, when you have a real social problem, a celebrity

00:39:49.940 and a reality show are literally the worst ways to address it.

00:39:54.900 Because you can imagine, like, a documentary about the same thing that would have actually,

00:40:00.820 like, educated the audience. 0.96

00:40:02.540 Whereas a reality show, of course, they're going to fucking edit it in this way. 0.99

00:40:05.880 Like, of course, they're going to set up these fucking stunts. 0.98

00:40:07.900 There's a scene in the West Virginia season where he like opens up this mom's fridge and freezer and there are just like a bunch of frozen pizzas in it. 0.99

00:40:19.340 And he's like, this is disgusting.

00:40:21.400 I can't believe you're feeding your kids this. 1.00

00:40:23.200 You're killing your kids by feeding them this stuff.

00:40:25.580 And he then cooks all of the food.

00:40:28.360 He fries all the corn dogs.

00:40:29.680 He bakes all the pizzas and he piles them up on their kitchen table.

00:40:33.140 And he's like, look at this.

00:40:34.620 Look how disgusting it is.

00:40:35.940 But that's like a month's worth of food, Jamie.

00:40:38.240 Anything is going to be a big pile on the table if you cook it all at once.

00:40:41.540 Right.

00:40:41.800 And he's like, it's all brown. 0.92

00:40:43.300 It's all the same color.

00:40:44.700 And this is a very frequent interaction that he has on each of these shows.

00:40:51.040 And actually, we're going to watch one of them from Jamie's Ministry of Food, which is the one in Yorkshire.

00:40:57.820 OK, so in Ministry of Food, Jamie Oliver says that he wants to make Rotherham the culinary capital of the UK.

00:41:06.800 And the way that he's going to do that is by teaching its residents how to cook. 0.97

00:41:11.320 OK, we're going to watch a little clip, little clippy clip of one of the many trips that Jamie Oliver makes into the homes of like low income moms. 0.95

00:41:23.100 OK, God. 1.00

00:41:23.940 Yeah, sorry.

00:41:24.440 You'd be really bleak.

00:41:25.440 Sorry, pal.

00:41:26.100 Natasha has never cooked a meal for her children, Kaya and Robbie.

00:41:31.980 Dinner is nearly always a kebab.

00:41:34.240 Give me the lowdown, then,

00:41:35.440 cos, like, the fact that you've sort of let us turn up

00:41:37.700 tells me that you're open-minded and...

00:41:39.740 I'm sick of this.

00:41:41.540 You might, yeah. Right, so you're...

00:41:42.660 I'm absolutely sick of it.

00:41:43.460 You're sick of the junk food, you're sick of the repetition.

00:41:46.500 It's affecting her.

00:41:46.920 Right, in what sort of way?

00:41:48.620 Well, she's not healthy.

00:41:50.040 She's been in twice for a tea taken out, cos they've rotted, they've gone bad.

00:41:53.720 Right.

00:41:54.180 What's your favourite, pop?

00:41:56.040 That's Peppa.

00:41:56.720 Dr Peppa will love it, don't we?

00:41:58.380 And what happens if you don't do nothing about it?

00:42:00.040 Where do you see it going? 1.00

00:42:01.600 I see her being obese. 1.00

00:42:03.240 I see her being really, really unhealthy. 0.94

00:42:05.680 Really.

00:42:06.720 And it's not good.

00:42:08.020 So how much are you on a budget?

00:42:09.700 Tight budget.

00:42:10.540 Because to be honest, if you're spending 12 quid, 10 quid a night,

00:42:13.920 seven days a week, that's 70 quid.

00:42:15.300 I know.

00:42:15.600 That's quite a lot of money, actually, just on food.

00:42:17.540 So you only get £8 a week as it is.

00:42:19.180 Yeah, so you get £8 a week.

00:42:20.680 I get £8 a week.

00:42:21.300 So you're on...

00:42:21.960 I'm on benefits.

00:42:22.940 You're on benefits.

00:42:23.500 so as you can tell i'm spending more than what i get i don't know i just i just know i can't

00:42:30.940 keep doing it i really don't want to do it don't want to do it ever again i want to learn how to

00:42:35.480 cook and just be healthy yeah makes me so uncomfortable this thing happens in every

00:42:44.240 episode oh yeah that i was able to see there was a great op-ed that i read about this that was just

00:42:49.480 like when you are this poor your entire life is no yeah your kids are having a birthday can you

00:42:55.540 have a birthday party no a new movie is coming out and you want to see it can you see it no

00:43:00.360 food is like one of the only affordable pleasures that people have when they have absolutely like

00:43:09.200 deeply limited access to almost everything else in their lives right his response to this isn't 0.93

00:43:16.660 to go, Oh, holy shit, you're on benefits and you only get 80 pounds a week. Yeah, you got to get a 0.93

00:43:22.760 cooking class. Yeah, this is a show that's produced for an audience. And this plays into a long

00:43:29.380 standing dynamic of more class privileged people sort of leering at what poor people eat. I know

00:43:35.500 it feels really Victorian. This is like a fundamentally conservative approach and fundamentally

00:43:41.260 like not an upstream approach, right? It says it's talking about systems. And it's proposing

00:43:45.760 once again as so many things on this show have an individual solution to a systemic problem

00:43:51.180 there's also an interesting shift in him too because the first show seemed like it at least

00:43:56.280 somewhere acknowledged that like this is a resources issue and we need to go right to the

00:44:00.760 top and like talk to tony blair about giving more money to this but then by the time we get to

00:44:04.240 ministry of food it seems like he's basically abandoned that and it's like let's teach people

00:44:08.740 to cook it just feels like he is sort of losing the thread right and or he's following the threat

00:44:14.660 of reality tv and losing the thread of like policy solutions right and like actually fixing

00:44:19.580 the problem because ultimately his job is to make a tv show yeah at the end of the day the people who

00:44:23.780 are paying him are people who are paying him for a tv show right right in the same way that like

00:44:28.000 our bottom line is to release episodes for for our listeners which we're really good at which

00:44:33.060 we've never failed so fucking good we just like our schedule is perfect so following his tv success

00:44:39.860 in the UK. Jamie Oliver follows the James Corden path. Yeah. Comes on over to the US, right? 0.91

00:44:47.100 They're like, look, we have poor people in America that we also love to gawk at. Let's send it. Let's

00:44:52.480 send Jamie to West Virginia. The first season focuses on Huntington, West Virginia, which is

00:44:57.540 the fattest city in America, right? Isn't that why they'd choose it? It was listed as America's

00:45:02.720 unhealthiest city. Oh, who decides that? And he's like, it's a government statistic based on

00:45:09.220 death rates oh really what but also there is like it is true that at this point Huntington had the

00:45:16.860 nation's highest rates of heart disease diabetes they had the highest rates of seniors who had

00:45:21.760 lost their teeth oh god this show really sort of opened the door to some very naked anti-fatness

00:45:29.760 and classism and made way for the time-honored tradition of people outside of Appalachia sort

00:45:35.960 of gawking and telling them how they're doing it wrong yes so jamie oliver heads to an elementary

00:45:41.400 school in west virginia and essentially does jamie's school dinners all over again i remember

00:45:46.460 this he's like berating the lunch ladies and then there's one lunch lady who's like you're a

00:45:51.080 celebrity you don't care and he starts like crying it's like i swear on my children that i care right

00:45:56.560 he says i swear on my children's lives and she just shakes her head and goes don't do that

00:46:00.660 like i was so hard on the school cooks team i was like yeah man yeah at one point he says

00:46:09.900 so they get pizza for breakfast and chicken nuggets for lunch welcome to america oh nice 0.99

00:46:15.500 he's also doing the whole like americans are gross and fat and dumb thing also i make fun 0.98

00:46:21.060 of britain constantly but also like the problems that britain has are the same as the problems 0.99

00:46:25.420 that america has they're so similar no position to like talk shit and jamie is similarly in no 0.84

00:46:31.920 position to talk shit so he does his usual sort of set of things he does the thing where he shows 0.99

00:46:36.940 kids vegetables and they can't say what they are he does a thing where he takes there's like a dump 0.99

00:46:42.380 truck of fat and he empties it into a dumpster in front of a bunch of parents and kids and they're

00:46:48.280 like this is how much fat you're eating it's like oprah's wagon of fat on steroids but now like two 0.90

00:46:54.000 decades of reality tv have gone by everything has to be fucking amplified he does a bit where he 0.86

00:47:00.160 shows kids how he says chicken nuggets are made what he does is he butchers a chicken he takes 0.91

00:47:05.800 off the breast he takes off the legs he takes off the wings blah blah he puts the whole chicken

00:47:10.040 carcass bones and all and sort of trimmings into a food processor he strains out the solids

00:47:16.220 and ends up with this bowl of like pink goo right and then he adds in flour he calls it stabilizers

00:47:24.860 and i was like that's just flour yeah yeah you're just having flour and then he's like and then you

00:47:29.240 have to add a bunch of flavorings and spices so it doesn't taste terrible and then you get to this

00:47:35.340 very famous clip of him asking these kids do you think that's good for you or bad for you and the

00:47:42.360 kids all go bad and he goes would you still eat it and they go yeah like all of their hands go up

00:47:49.760 like 100 of them and then he says why would you eat it if you know it's bad for you and one of

00:47:56.200 the kids says we're just hungry yeah i wonder if this is the real difference between britain

00:48:00.360 and america because the the famous thing about this is that like the kids are supposed to be

00:48:05.660 like ew gross no he leads into it by saying i'm gonna do an experiment and this experiment works

00:48:11.340 every time the kids are supposed to say no we don't want to eat it because it's like he's put 0.95

00:48:15.920 all this gross shit into it but then i wonder if the real linchpin of this is just like are the 0.99

00:48:20.140 kids hungry or not are you doing this at lunchtime and they haven't eaten this is a real marshmallow 0.99

00:48:24.820 test moment it's worth noting that in addition to being totally fucking hilarious this moment

00:48:32.440 also leads to a humongous lawsuit. Wait, really? A $1.2 billion lawsuit filed by Beef Products 0.86

00:48:45.140 Incorporated. Of course. They're a processor in South Dakota. They sue ABC. ABC ends up settling

00:48:53.500 the suit for $177 million. No way. So it was easier to just write a check, I guess. When you

00:48:59.340 watch it now there is a very clear adr insert of jamie oliver saying luckily this is not the way

00:49:06.880 they're made in america it's so clumsy it's clearly like the room tone is all wrong his voice is all

00:49:16.820 wrong i'm like buddy you're running this ship like a podcast get it together yeah this is like us and

00:49:22.540 we have to fact check something like everything completely changes like a youtuber who cuts in

00:49:28.360 is like editing me yeah there is also an incredibly funny scene that happens at the

00:49:36.380 opening of the show where he goes on a local radio show and the dj is like super antagonistic

00:49:43.580 and says things to him like what are you gonna make us do we don't want to sit around and eat

00:49:48.160 lettuce all day okay and at one point in the radio interview he goes you gotta tell us what to do who

00:49:54.000 made you king and i was like oh yeah yeah he unfortunately went on paul revere radio

00:49:59.220 yeah this is the thing it's both very funny but also it's sort of a hallmark of these shows that

00:50:06.020 he is framing this up as the core problem is that people know what's good for them and they just

00:50:12.200 won't do it yeah at one point he talks to the food services director for the school district

00:50:18.540 and is like why are you feeding these kids such terrible food it's unconscionable and she's like

00:50:23.600 well we have to meet usda federal standards and we have a really tight budget and his response

00:50:30.760 is genuinely well i just came here to feed kids i didn't know i had to take a math test oh my gosh

00:50:36.780 like why is this so complicated he's like okay poindexter you just got hundreds of millions of

00:50:42.680 dollars from tony blair you know that there will be math at some point and also it's not a math

00:50:49.680 test she's just like you have to serve a certain amount of protein and you have to serve a certain

00:50:52.840 amount of starch and like yeah this is not an uncommon thing but he's like oh shucks i'm just

00:50:57.580 a guy who showed up who wanted to cook for some kids and you're giving me all these rules right

00:51:01.160 i'm just a guy who's made this my number one social issue for years now you can't expect me

00:51:06.340 to know what a budget is yeah yes the radio dj becomes this sort of like recurring character 0.64

00:51:12.500 in the show and he's like i gotta get this guy on board he's the biggest naysayer and i gotta get 0.55

00:51:17.920 him yeah he takes the radio dj to a funeral home to see where we've gotten with health in this 0.67

00:51:25.360 country and they talk to the funeral directors and they turn a corner and then you just see

00:51:31.020 a very large casket for a very fat person it is filmed and presented as ludicrously large

00:51:38.800 the funeral director walks through how it won't fit in a hearse and you actually have to get a

00:51:43.620 cargo van and none of the equipment that they have works with it. And I'm like, you're just

00:51:48.780 saying that you're not prepared for fat people. Shouldn't they be set up for fat people? In 0.96

00:51:52.920 addition to that funeral home moment, he also does a whole personal stories segment. He brings

00:51:59.400 in this young woman and her mom who says that her dad died of being overweight. Then she tells the

00:52:06.880 story and she's like he was so concerned with his own weight that he decided to go have gastric

00:52:14.080 bypass and then a week after gastric bypass he passed out in the hall they rushed him to the

00:52:20.680 hospital and he died at the hospital and i was like oh wow i don't think that's a death of being

00:52:25.420 fat i think that's maybe a death of complications of a major surgery yeah that's actually a point

00:52:32.420 against right what you're arguing here right i think the darkest moment on this show and this

00:52:40.620 is where i was like i need to stop watching and cry for a while as with other shows he picks sort

00:52:46.300 of a family to like follow around and talk to about their food choices in this family

00:52:50.820 the dad is a trucker the mom raises the three kids all of the kids are fat this is the house

00:52:56.660 where he cooks all their frozen food and dumps it on the table and pushes this mom until she weeps 0.71

00:53:01.820 about how she's like killing her kids right he takes their deep fryer and buries it in the

00:53:08.820 backyard and then he turns to the mom and he's like you're a church going lady right why don't

00:53:14.060 we pray over it and then later he tells the camera that he did that just for a bit of a laugh he's

00:53:18.200 like i hate these people he then takes this family to a doctor who tells them on camera and in front

00:53:26.920 of their children that their sixth grade middle child may already have diabetes that is the

00:53:33.660 language that they use on the show the doctor talks about all these things and he's like well

00:53:38.420 that just means he's going to have amputations he's probably going to go blind like he names

00:53:42.840 all of these things that are possible outcomes of diabetes but they are outcomes when diabetes

00:53:48.100 is not managed or treated right he is presuming and understanding that these are folks who will

00:53:52.860 not have access to healthcare. Right. And he's painting this like ghoulish picture. At this

00:53:59.860 point, he hasn't even taken a blood sample. He hasn't even run like an A1C test. He hasn't done

00:54:04.420 anything. He's just like, oh, he's got this ring around his neck that can sometimes be characteristic

00:54:09.460 of elevated sugar levels. So he might already have diabetes. And if he did, these are all the

00:54:15.680 things that would happen. He says, quote, we're talking about shortening their life by 30, 40

00:54:20.220 years they may be dying in their 30s he says to a mom about her own kids in the absence of any test

00:54:27.880 results yeah they're doing this on camera for a show that's going to be prime time on abc and you

00:54:34.280 just watch this kid wither and recede into him like you just watch the wave of shame take over

00:54:43.000 him and like the message is that what fat kids need is stigma it's a scared straight thing which 0.98

00:54:51.180 is one of the least effective ways to motivate people to do fucking anything like it it doesn't 0.97

00:54:56.940 work for drugs it doesn't work for food it doesn't work for anything and also if it's a kid that kid 0.95

00:55:02.000 doesn't have a lot of control over what he's eating anyway jamie oliver is using like a kind

00:55:06.480 of rhetoric around school food and parents. He uses some of that in a New York Times piece that

00:55:13.960 runs at the time called Jamie Oliver puts America's diet on a diet. Okay. Here's an example of the

00:55:20.440 kind of rhetoric. I just sent you a quote. It says, we came across a table of Krispy Kreme

00:55:25.780 donuts. They're a treat. They're to be loved, he said, but start having them every day job done.

00:55:31.440 It's harsh to say, but these parents, when they bend to the doctor and keep feeding their kids

00:55:35.200 inappropriate food that is child abuse same as a cigarette burn or a bruise dude right just tone

00:55:43.760 it down jamie it's also worth talking about the results in huntington we talked a little bit about

00:55:49.780 the results in the uk in huntington after this all went through 77 percent of kids who were part

00:55:58.340 of west virginia schools who were part of this program said that they didn't like or eat lunch

00:56:03.460 anymore oh many of the kids were just straight up throwing the lunch away right so there's like

00:56:09.300 a couple of problems there right one is this is a town with a high level of poverty which means a

00:56:15.040 lot of those kids are reliant on those meals right like that's how some of those kids are just getting

00:56:19.160 fed period and the other problem is that because no one was buying lunches staff started to get

00:56:26.960 laid off it started to be seen as like a less essential position and they're really strapped

00:56:30.920 for cash so they're not going to pay people to make lunches the kids aren't eating on top of all

00:56:36.660 of that his menu changes didn't meet the usda standards oh and was way higher than the budget

00:56:44.160 that they had oh so he did the same thing where he just like hey yada yada yada is over like the

00:56:49.140 actual constraints they're operating under right and he's like look at how much better it can be

00:56:52.900 and it's like yeah if you ignore the law and money i guess it's actually really easy to feed kids if

00:56:59.320 you don't have to think about those two things. Totally correct. Sure, dude, whatever. Yeah,

00:57:04.420 there's a couple of things to know about sort of the ending of the show. It ends with a big

00:57:09.220 celebration in Huntington. They do like a big high production value sort of like

00:57:13.840 festival in the town. At that big celebration, they get a gift of $80,000 from US Foods,

00:57:22.280 which is like a big food supplier to schools in the US. And they're like, we're so proud to

00:57:27.740 present this giant check for 80 grand and then you find out first of all that it's 80 grand

00:57:33.920 and second of all that it's meant to be split amongst all the schools in the county there are

00:57:38.180 26 schools in cabell county west virginia so that is a one-time payment of three grand

00:57:45.580 right and then if you break it down like kid by kid it's like 75 cents it's nothing it's not

00:57:51.460 anything and it's again one-time payment right right and they're like oh my god what a victory

00:57:56.580 rascal flats concert how much did they pay rascal flats more than 80k they should have just given 0.97

00:58:01.400 that to the fucking kids jamie oliver is very proud to tell the camera you know how much they 0.99

00:58:05.440 did this gig for nothing because they get it because they want the fat kids to be thin heroes 1.00

00:58:10.760 because they're going on abc and it's a press gig because they're getting a shitload of free 0.66

00:58:15.940 promotion great at the end of the final episode of the us one jamie like receives this like

00:58:25.400 reporting from the u.s that he's like oh my gosh they're trying to go back to processed foods in

00:58:32.600 huntington west virginia i can't believe it after all the work that we put in and then i looked up

00:58:37.940 the article that they're referencing and they also end up saying this on the show they're like

00:58:42.920 yeah we had a year's worth of food sitting in our freezer that we had paid for and this dude just

00:58:49.640 rolled in right and was like make everything different and they're like we already paid for

00:58:55.100 this food right they were talking about like what if we just do it on fridays it's like chicken

00:58:59.840 nuggets and fries or what like how do we get rid of this food how do we use it up and not contribute

00:59:04.640 to further food waste he's like well what do you need in order to do that he's they're like we need

00:59:09.040 them to take the food back or to trade it out for healthier food or something like we got to work

00:59:13.520 out a deal here this is not like an issue of like we're just being willful and then he leaves that

00:59:18.860 meeting and comes out and tells the camera imagine being an alcoholic and saying it's all right to

00:59:23.800 have a drink on a friday again people have been like there are real constraints here yeah we need

00:59:30.740 to figure out what to do with this food we would like to have other food we would like to have the

00:59:35.420 staff to cook it and to pay for it we would love to have all of that money we do not have all of

00:59:40.520 that money he seems to think that people want to feed the kids shitty food i feel like it's like

00:59:45.240 they're they're they just don't have a lot of other options yeah but then he just keeps being

00:59:49.360 like well you should have other options then it's like yeah they should 80 pounds a week on benefits

00:59:55.420 so is the epilogue to this that everything just reverted back to where it was pretty much like a

00:59:59.660 lot of stuff is just sort of back to where it was before it made a big splash it made some short-term

01:00:04.340 changes mostly for like a few years at a time that funding that tony blair funding was not

01:00:10.640 necessarily like renewed at the same yeah i know that's always the problem with these things yeah

01:00:15.340 I live in a town where every two years we're passing a new library levy.

01:00:19.520 Yeah, same, same, same.

01:00:20.280 It's like, save our libraries.

01:00:21.300 And it's like, buddies, we should just agree that libraries need money and we should just

01:00:24.860 give them the money that they need.

01:00:26.260 What? 0.99

01:00:26.600 Dude, Seattle had a fucking referendum of like to build a seawall down on the waterfront 0.99

01:00:31.620 so like the city wouldn't slide into the sea. 0.99

01:00:35.280 And it got like 75% of the vote.

01:00:38.940 It was like, should the city have like a giant disaster befall it?

01:00:44.180 And like some people were like, I'm not saying yes, but I'm not saying no.

01:00:50.640 So the, the place that I wanted to like leave us for this episode, living by his own values

01:00:58.040 and his own code.

01:00:58.960 I think Jamie Oliver really thinks he's doing the right thing.

01:01:01.740 The problem is he has come to that decision about doing the right thing that focuses on

01:01:08.180 fat people and fat kids.

01:01:09.840 And he simply will not listen to them. 1.00

01:01:12.860 Right, right. 0.95

01:01:13.420 He's not listening to fat people. 0.63

01:01:14.740 He's not listening to poor folks. 1.00

01:01:16.160 He's not listening to black and brown people. 0.98

01:01:18.420 All of these folks who have really legit critiques of him and really legit requests of him. 1.00

01:01:24.280 Right.

01:01:24.480 He is sort of either begrudgingly fulfilling them or getting kind of defensive or just shutting down and refusing to acknowledge it.

01:01:33.340 On some level, I think the defense of him with this stuff is that he is up against like massive systemic barriers.

01:01:38.880 Right. 0.97

01:01:39.260 Like, the fact that one fucking celebrity with one TV show couldn't fix the problem of, like, school lunches in the UK. 0.99

01:01:46.280 Well, like, yeah, of course, right? 0.98

01:01:47.800 That's not how you're going to solve a problem like this.

01:01:49.260 But also, it seems like people for two decades have been telling him, yo, these problems are systemic.

01:01:54.920 They are bigger than you.

01:01:56.100 And he keeps just being like, well, I can solve them.

01:01:59.100 And, like, doing basically the same thing over and over again.

01:02:01.360 Right.

01:02:01.660 Have you tried using a walk?

01:02:04.040 Yeah.

01:02:04.480 Maybe the people yelling at Jamie Oliver just need to put it in terms that he understands and be like, Jamie, if you could incorporate the realities of the United Kingdom into your work, that would be wicked scrummy.

01:02:17.080 I don't think that's correct.

01:02:19.060 I've learned nothing in this episode.

01:02:34.480 We'll be right back.

Maintenance Phase - April 04, 2024

Jamie Oliver

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