La Mode Verte
Environmental Awareness Through Media ProductionsArchive for Food Revolution
Jamie Oliver Banned From Making LA School Healthy
www.treehugger.com 8th February 2011
UK celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s experience in the USA has gone from bad to worse. His previous attempt to introduce healthy foods to the most obese city in the country (and therefore one of the most obese in the world), Huntington in West Virginia, ended is tears due to the hostility he experienced there. Surprisingly Jamie did not pack his bags and fly back to the UK, where he is more appreciated, but instead flew to the opposite coast of the US and tried to bring his campaign to Los Angeles, believing that his attempts to introduce healthy food to school children would be more publicised in the city of angels. Things have not gone well. Filming was planned for a preparatory school in the centre of the city but Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest school district in the country, banned Jamie and his team from doing any filming what so ever (the LAUSD feeds 680,000 students daily). A stunt involving filling a school bus full of sand to show how much sugar goes into children’s milk drinks every day (pictured) also flopped with only 22 people turning up. In response to yet another hostile welcome, Jamie said, “L.A. is not on my side. They’ve got their fingers in their ears — la, la, la — they’re not having it. This city doesn’t care. I don’t want to winge about turnout… but maybe L.A. was a big mistake.”
More Americans die of heart disease than gun crime and, in LA, there is a 50% obesity rate in the poorer areas of the city.
