Jamie Oliver: TED Prize Wish: Teach Every Child About Food

Extra credit reflection by DEVON H.

Original TED page w/ speaker bio, links, comments, etc:

Jamie Oliver:  TED Prize Wish: Teach Every Child About Food

I love everything about Jamie Oliver. I used to watch his “Naked Chef” TV show on Food Network where he would only use fresh or “naked” food to cook his recipes. I also watched his Food Revolution show on ABC this year. So, when I saw he had a TED talk I watched it. In his talk he talks about his experience in Huntington, WV dealing with the obesity they have there.

Food nutrition and school lunches is a topic that is close to my heart. I also covered Ann Cooper’s talk on School Lunches where she talked about how she changed the school lunch program in her school district in California. Jamie is trying to do the same thing with his Food Revolution but all over the US. He started his revolution in England by changing the school lunch programs there, and he succeeded. 1 out of every 3 people in the United States are obese. 9% of our children are living with type-2 diabetes, and this year’s generation of children is the first generation to die at a younger age than their parents. Jamie knows that this shouldn’t happen and now he is trying to get the rest of America aware of that fact.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) sets regulations for school’s lunches, but schools are taking short cuts with these requirements because the food they are serving is not chosen by the USDA it’s chosen by the school’s funding agents. Schools are also reimbursed by the USDA’s National Lunch Program. They are given 25 cents per meal served and $2.63 for every reduced price meal. Schools only take about a dollar of that to be spent on buying more food for kids.