02.17.10
Jamie Oliver and Food Education
A few years ago I watched a video series called, Jamie’s Kitchen. IIRC, it was a six part series of students going through chef’s school hosted by Jamie Oliver. I found it to be very interesting, and also thought it was very gracious of Jamie to sponsor these kids and help them become professional chefs.
Apparently, Jamie’s love for food and helping others didn’t stop with helping some students become professional chefs. Recently I found a video of him speaking at a TED conference discussing the importance of teaching children about food and how it’s so important that this be done because of the rising obesity rates here in the U.S. Obesity, Jamie points out, is linked to so many health issues that it must be addressed. His contention is that our society has been so removed from basic cooking skills that many of us don’t even know what foods are. . . for example he showed a short clip wherein he showed small children various veggies and they didn’t even know what they were! The idea is if we don’t know what things are, we won’t eat them. Conversely, we need to know what exactly we’re eating in all our processed, packaged foods. Education, he believes, is the key and as a result he has opened free cooking lessons at a facility in Virginia.
For anyone interested, here’s the link to Jamie’s presentation.
We need more people like Jamie. Thanks, Jamie, for your inspiration, dedication, and heart of gold.
Marlakins
