Jamie Oliver Helping us to Look Better Naked
ABC announced that it will air a new six-part series under the banner of Ryan Seacrest Productions featuring British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver (a.k.a. The Naked Chef). Oliver, who has made a mission of encouraging young people to eat better, will take his campaign against junk food and obesity to some of America’s fattest cities and give them healthy makeovers.
Oliver has been a proponent for healthy eating, especially in schools. The new series, yet unnamed, will combine elements of his two Channel 4 programs, Jamie’s School Dinners and Jamie’s Ministry Of Food. In Jamie’s School Dinners, Oliver took charge of 20,000 school lunches a day as he campaigned to ban junk foods in schools and stop students from eating a quarter of a ton of French fries each week. In Jamie’s Ministry of Food, his goal was to get people cooking again, by demonstrating that cooking is fun, cool, can save money and help people live healthier lives.
Oliver is passionate about healthy eating and indicates that he has been working on bringing a project of this magnitude to the U.S. for about five years. His partnership with Seacrest came about after Seacrest discussed the poor quality of school lunches on his Los Angeles radio program and received a huge response.
Seacrest, an energetic radio and television host, prolific producer and consummate entrepreneur, says he couldn’t maintain his hectic schedule if he didn’t eat right and exercise. “I’m a firm believer that the fuel we put into our body results in a healthy lifestyle,”he said. “Jamie’s going to come over here, roll up his sleeves and use the resources of each town to help condition living habits to make it a better and healthier place”
“This is without question the most important and challenging thing I’ll ever do in my life,” states the 34-year old Oliver, “But I truly believe that I can at least plant the seeds of change in America in terms of helping a community to cook better, feed their kids better and save money.”
ABC is excited about the new reality show. “Jamie has been through this mission before,” ABC’s co-head of alternative series Vicki Dummer said. “He will be an advocate for change, but not act like, ‘I’m from Britain and you Americans are fat.’ I think he’s really equipped to make a change and knock on the right doors.”
It’s true that Americans have poor eating habits, and consume too many processed foods. But processed foods are cheap, compared to other types. So rather than put yet another celebrity on the tube telling us how much and what to eat, perhaps the best thing anyone can do to make us eat healthier is to somehow make healthy food cheaper.
The targeted city (or cities) for the new series have not yet been identified, but they will most likely be pulled from the “fattest city”list, compiled by Men’s Fitness. The United States is the fattest major nation on in the world, with 119 million people overweight. About a third of American adults are obese compared with 24 percent of Britons.
The show will air in early 2010, both on the ABC television network and on Britain’s Channel 4.
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One or more of these cities will likely to be the locations where Chef Jamie Oliver takes his latest campaign to reform eating styles.
2009 Fattest Cities in America
(according to Men’s Fitness)
1. Miami, FL
2. Oklahoma City, OK
3. San Antonio, TX
4. Las Vegas, NV
5. New York, NY
6. Houston, TX
7. El Paso, TX
8. Jacksonville, FL
9. Charlotte, NC
10. Louisville-Jefferson, KY
11. Memphis, TN
12. Detroit, MI
13. Chicago, IL
14. Dallas-Fort Worth, TX
15. San Jose, CA
16. Tulsa, OK
17. Baltimore, MD
18. Columbus, OH
19. Raleigh, NC
20. Philadelphia, PA
21. L.A.-Long Beach, CA
22. Phoenix-Mesa, AZ
23. Indianapolis, IN
24. San Diego, CA
25. Kansas City, MO
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