0:00

I have no tagline

0:02

suggestions because all I

0:04

have is problematic jokes

0:06

about British people.

0:17

Because I lived there, I feel like that gives me

0:19

a license to be kind of mean. I'm

0:21

guessing some British listeners will

0:24

disagree. It's very funny. It's like

0:26

whenever anybody asked me about like some country I haven't

0:28

spent much time in like Thailand, I'm like a

0:31

beautiful country with noble people. But if they

0:33

ask me about Britain or Denmark, I'm like, first

0:35

of all, I have this

0:37

long rant ready. That's true. I

0:40

did ask you if I should go to Denmark

0:43

for a work trip. And you were like, absolutely

0:45

not. That is not something you need in your

0:47

life. Keep it moving. The minute you asked, I

0:49

was like, I like tapped on my little keyboard as

0:51

like, okay, all caps. I'm going to need all caps for this

0:53

answer. No.

0:56

But okay, does does Jamie Oliver even have like

0:59

a catchphrase? I was going to

1:01

use like one of his like little cooking catchphrases

1:03

like BAM or whatever. He's got a few. It's

1:05

less of a catchphrase and more of like a

1:07

lexicon that he'll call

1:09

things like wicked or okay. Slammin.

1:12

Welcome to maintenance phase. The podcast

1:14

that is wicked. Slammin. Oh,

1:17

look at him go. We

1:19

can cut everything before this and make it

1:21

seem like I knew I knew his little catchwords. I'm

1:24

Aubrey Gordon. I'm Michael Hobbs. If

1:26

you would like to support the show,

1:28

you can do that at Patreon or

1:31

you can subscribe through Apple Podcasts. It's

1:33

the same audio content in both places.

1:35

Same stuff. Today, Michael.

1:37

At long last. At

1:40

long last. Talking about

1:42

Mr. Jamie Oliver. We are

1:44

talking about Jamie Oliver and we're particularly

1:46

talking about his influence in talking about

1:49

school food and kids diets. Oh, yeah.

1:51

Mike, tell me what you know about

1:54

Jamie Oliver. He's a TV chef who started

1:56

with a show called The Naked Chef, which

1:58

I genuinely believed was a naked man

2:01

cooking for a very long time. Oh,

2:03

Tiny Baby Gay was like, I'm listening.

2:05

Yeah, exactly. I

2:07

was like, when exactly is it on in America?

2:10

He became one of the

2:13

early TV chef celebrities. He

2:15

then did a TV series

2:17

where he was going to reform

2:19

school. They say school dinners,

2:21

which is kind of confusing, which I

2:23

was actually very into. I was

2:25

Jamie Oliver pills. Were you? We talked about this

2:28

before we were recording, but I have kind of

2:30

a soft spot for Jamie Oliver because he seems

2:32

like a genuinely nice guy who is trying. But

2:36

then I know that since I've kind of stopped paying

2:38

as much attention to him, he's made

2:40

a series of blunders that are less

2:42

defensible. But I don't actually know

2:44

the scope and nature of blunders. Yeah,

2:47

I will say I came in similarly.

2:49

I did not have a soft spot

2:51

for him, mostly just because he was

2:54

part of that wave of late 2000s, early

2:58

2010s. The

3:00

problem is fat kids. Kind

3:03

of media. And as someone who at

3:05

that point was a fat

3:07

person in their 20s, that felt too

3:09

close to home for me. And then you

3:12

went on a film tour in the UK, and

3:14

people in the signing line were like, you should do

3:16

an episode on Jamie Oliver 200 times. No,

3:18

I told people I was thinking of

3:21

doing an episode on Jamie Oliver. And

3:23

I used the sign lines to ask

3:25

people. The closest you got

3:27

to Defenders was, I guess his heart's in the

3:29

right place. And for the most part, people were

3:31

just like, fuck this dude,

3:34

fuck this dude. It

3:36

really felt like when you would talk

3:38

to people from the UK about James

3:41

Corden before the Balthazar thing happened. Yeah,

3:43

or me talking about Elon Musk at

3:45

any period up until the present. The

3:48

world has finally caught up to you, Michael. This

3:51

is becoming a California high speed rail podcast.

3:55

This is always in danger of becoming such

3:57

a thing. Jamie

4:00

Oliver was born in 1975. He was

4:02

born and raised in Essex. His

4:04

parents ran a pub. He

4:08

went to a grammar school, which is like a

4:11

sort of middle-classy thing to do, right? So

4:13

confusing. There are so many kinds of

4:16

schools. There's like public and private, but

4:18

they mean different things. He starts off

4:20

as a pastry chef at Neil Street

4:22

restaurant and over time moves on to

4:24

become the sous chef at

4:27

the super acclaimed River Cafe. Are you

4:29

familiar with the River Cafe? This is

4:31

in London? Mm-hmm. Oh, no,

4:33

I had no money. And I ate out

4:35

of the sales bin at Sainsbury's on my

4:37

way home because I had sandwiches for 49p.

4:40

Did you get the smoked salmon one? Why don't we

4:42

have smoked salmon sandwiches here? It's

4:45

at the River Cafe that he makes

4:47

his first TV appearance in a show

4:49

called Christmas at the River Cafe. He

4:53

sort of pops on screen as sort of

4:55

the way that the story gets told, which

4:57

like, I believe it. He's a charismatic dude,

4:59

right? That leads to his first

5:01

TV series, the aforementioned The Naked Chef,

5:03

which premiered in 1999. In

5:07

2005, he launches a campaign

5:09

called Feed Me Better, which

5:12

is his campaign to change school

5:14

children's meals. As

5:17

a result of that, they have a

5:19

Channel 4 viewers poll and they name

5:21

him the most inspiring political figure of

5:23

2005. Political

5:25

figure, that's a transformation. Right?

5:28

I think there's a little bit of a sort of Dr. Oz leaning

5:31

story here of like, by

5:33

all accounts, he's a very good chef. And

5:36

he gets into hot water when he veers

5:38

away from that thing. Yeah, and also he's

5:40

very likable. He has the sort of the

5:42

combination of fine dining and then this every

5:45

man quality. Right, since the sort of start

5:47

of his career, he has published 32 cookbooks.

5:51

Oh, wow. He has presented

5:53

44 TV shows of more

5:55

than one episode and 19

5:58

single episode specials. He's almost like a Twitch

6:00

streamer at that point. Just

6:02

on, just on. He

6:05

has also faced in that time more and

6:07

more critique. In addition to getting more and

6:09

more successful, he's faced more and more critique.

6:11

When I started this episode, I texted

6:14

you and was like, hey, I think I'm gonna do Jamie

6:16

Oliver. And you were like, oh cool, influencer episode. And I

6:18

was like, yeah, it'll be like a light little influencer episode.

6:20

Okay. No! It

6:22

was like Gwyneth Haltro volumes of

6:24

media that

6:27

have been written about this guy. Think

6:29

pieces, op-eds. So much

6:31

ink has been spilled over every

6:34

little thing that Jamie Oliver does. Some

6:37

of it I think is really, really

6:39

on point. Okay. And some

6:41

of it I think is like, as you would say, we're in

6:43

bitch-eaten-crackers territory with some of it. Yeah, this is always the

6:45

thing with British influencers is that some of them are

6:47

really garbage, but then on the other hand, they have

6:50

a super garbage media environment. And

6:52

so it's hard to separate,

6:54

does this person suck or does the coverage

6:56

of them suck? Yes. We're

6:59

gonna do a little rundown of some of

7:01

the things that he has been criticized for.

7:03

Okay. And then we're gonna dig into

7:05

our school dinners. Okay.

7:08

Stuff. One of his big critiques is

7:10

he's been criticized many times for being a hypocrite.

7:13

Okay. He had a whole

7:15

show about the conditions in which chickens

7:17

are raised and produced. After

7:19

making the show about chickens, he then

7:21

signed a multi-million pound deal with

7:23

Sainsbury's who at that point did

7:26

not conform to the RSPCA standards

7:29

at the time. In 2015, he

7:31

worked with the UN Environment Program

7:33

as a quote unquote environmental champion.

7:36

Two years later, he signed a five million

7:38

pound deal with Shell. Oh. Okay.

7:45

Again, it's money. That's

7:47

quite bad. There are

7:49

also plenty of complaints

7:52

about racism, colonialism and

7:54

appropriation in his recipes. This is

7:56

from a piece on

7:58

CNN. In

8:02

the Sunday Times interview, Oliver acknowledged

8:04

that his Empire Roast Chicken, a

8:06

chicken recipe involving coriander, turmeric, garam

8:08

masala, and cumin, would no longer

8:11

be appropriate today. In

8:13

the episode titled Empire Roast Chicken,

8:15

Bombay Roasties, and Amazing Indian Gravy, Oliver

8:18

set out to celebrate what he called

8:20

our Indian love affair by making a

8:22

full-on collision between beautiful British roast dinners

8:24

and gutsy Asian spices. Oliver

8:26

also celebrated the trade routes he said led

8:29

to Indian spices making their way into British

8:31

dishes and which he used

8:33

in his Lemon-Scented Roast Empire-style tandoori

8:36

chicken. Toward the end of the episode, while

8:38

carving the chicken, Oliver said, this is

8:40

Empire food. You can use your hands, and

8:43

then raise the toast to the Empire

8:45

while clinking beers with members of

8:47

his camera crews. Although originally

8:49

billed in the episode as Lemon-Scented

8:51

Roast Empire-style tandoori chicken, the recipe

8:53

has now been renamed on Oliver's

8:56

website as Spiced Roast Chicken. Oooooooh!

9:00

This didn't seem that bad to me until

9:02

we got to the, let's toast to the

9:04

Empire. Right, right, right! There

9:07

are so many versions

9:09

of this kind of thing that have

9:11

happened. There have also been

9:13

critiques, and perhaps the most pervasive

9:15

critique of Jamie Oliver is around

9:17

class and classism. One

9:20

of the big, if you sort of talk to

9:22

people about Jamie Oliver, one of the big things

9:24

that comes up is they're like, he's charging eight

9:26

pounds for beans on toast! For

9:28

US listeners who are unfamiliar with beans on

9:30

toast, it's literally canned baked beans on a

9:33

pizza. For those of you

9:35

who are unfamiliar with this term, it is exactly

9:37

what it sounds like. His

9:39

version is definitely dressed up, it's on cabbada,

9:41

there are cherry tomatoes, there's basil and arugula

9:43

and balsamic and all kinds of stuff, but

9:46

it's still beans on toast. He has since

9:48

sort of reconsidered, but he's also kind

9:50

of doubled down. He tells the BBC,

9:52

quote, I should have been brighter. Heinz

9:55

came to us and offered 15,000 pounds

9:57

for us to put something cool made with baked

10:00

on the menu. Oh, it's more money stuff,

10:02

Jamie. That funds one student for a whole

10:04

year. Jamie. Am I going to do it?

10:06

Of course I am. Oh my god, he's

10:09

doing the speech from Schindler's list. But also

10:11

it's such a weird defense because like whatever,

10:13

if you don't want to buy the $8

10:18

fucking beans on toast, don't buy the $8 beans on toast. These

10:20

sorts of things don't really bother me that much. It just

10:22

seems like rich people dumb shit. And I'm

10:24

a cheapskate so I would just never go to this restaurant

10:26

anyway. This is where we start to get

10:28

into bitch eating crackers territory. Why are

10:30

you monitoring his menus? I don't really care.

10:33

I don't give a shit. But I will

10:35

say the classism stuff also sort of

10:37

seeps into how he shows up politically.

10:40

In January of 2022, he stages

10:42

this protest outside of number 10

10:45

Downing Street because of what he

10:47

calls the government's U-turn on obesity

10:49

policies, quote unquote. Oh, I remember

10:52

this. What do you remember about this

10:54

protest? Michael? Wasn't

10:56

this a whole Boris Johnson

10:58

getting COVID and being like, if I wasn't

11:00

so fat, I wouldn't have had this

11:03

problem or something. And then they were going to

11:05

do a bunch of stuff and they just didn't

11:07

do it or something. Sort of. I feel like

11:09

you're being nice and I'm totally wrong. Boris Johnson

11:11

gets COVID. He has all of this messaging about

11:13

how like this wouldn't have

11:17

happened if I weren't fat. So therefore we have to

11:19

have a quote unquote obesity

11:21

plan. Jamie Oliver in

11:23

January 2022, the government

11:25

he says is doing a quote

11:27

unquote U-turn on their

11:30

obesity policies. And the thing that

11:32

he is mad about the policy in question

11:35

is that the government had pledged to restrict

11:37

higher calorie foods in

11:40

supermarket promotions of buy one

11:42

get one free items. OK.

11:44

He's mad that people

11:47

are getting high calorie foods for

11:49

free. OK. So he stages this

11:51

big protest outside 10 Downing Street.

11:54

And the theme for the protest is

11:57

this policy is a total

11:59

eaten. mess. Oh,

12:01

that's actually not that bad. Sorry.

12:05

Pardon me. Excuse me. Look, I'm a man with a

12:11

podcast that has never had a good tagline.

12:13

There's one thing I know. Okay. You're like,

12:16

wow, he really did a scene that we have not

12:18

delivered. So here's, I'm going to send you a

12:23

little screen grab from Sky News

12:25

of this protest. The fuck? Oh

12:27

my God. So it's Jamie Oliver

12:29

in the front of a crowd

12:32

and he's holding an eaten mess.

12:34

Yeah. A giant like trifle

12:36

dish full of eaten mess. But then one

12:38

of the signs that somebody has in the

12:41

background is give peas a chance, which is

12:43

also good. There's Boris, keep your promise.

12:45

That one's bad. There are a number

12:47

of signs when you sort of zoom

12:49

out on these pictures of

12:51

like, this policy is an

12:54

hashtag eaten mess and they all

12:56

have hashtag. Yeah. The hashtag doesn't work if

12:58

it's not, if it's you're writing it in real

13:01

life, you can't, you can't click on

13:03

a hashtag in addition to and sort

13:05

of overlaying this classism critique or

13:08

some genuine sort of reportings about

13:10

what I would consider to be wage

13:12

theft. Oh, his restaurant chain, Jamie's Italian,

13:14

which was sort of a high street

13:17

chain closed in the 2010s

13:19

with debts of 83 million

13:22

pounds. And he gets big

13:25

headlines at the time for closing his

13:27

restaurants without having paid his staff.

13:29

Oh, that's bad. That's real

13:31

bad. They lay off 44 employees

13:35

at Christmas. The

13:37

last two sort of general critiques. Oh my God,

13:39

Mike, this has been the longest. I

13:41

know the longest table set. We're still table setting. This

13:44

is so I texted you this morning and was like,

13:46

oops, I need another hour. And then I was like,

13:48

I need another. It's

13:50

because I was sorting through that, like

13:52

just like dozens and dozens and dozens

13:55

of these stories being like, any sucks

13:57

for this on top of all

13:59

of that. He's kind of cringe.

14:05

We finally get to people's real beef with

14:07

this person. In 2012,

14:09

this is so fucking funny,

14:11

Mike. It's not like every

14:14

corporate restaurant chain has

14:16

shit like this where they're like famously

14:19

at Chick-fil-A, for example. If someone

14:21

says thank you, you don't say

14:23

you're welcome. If they ask you for something,

14:25

you don't say no problem. You

14:28

just say, it's my pleasure. Really? Yes,

14:30

absolutely. Oh, I've never been to Chick-fil-A. Oh, look

14:32

at you. I don't think we have in Seattle. We have

14:34

one in Oregon. Okay. And I went

14:36

one time and then I was like, sorry, this

14:38

is the reason that people are so worked up

14:41

about, like, man, I love gay people, but that

14:43

chicken is so good. I'm like, it's a fast

14:45

food chicken sandwich. Get ahold of your... Especially

14:48

in a world of Popeye's chicken sandwiches. Get

14:50

out of town. So, in 2012, a tweet

14:52

goes up. It

14:55

gets picked up by media. That

14:58

is allegedly a list of words

15:01

that servers at Jamie

15:03

Oliver's restaurants are supposedly

15:05

required to use. Okay.

15:08

I am sending you a link to

15:10

a team from Eater that has the

15:12

list in it. Oh,

15:14

man. Okay, it says, servers at Jamie

15:17

Oliver restaurants told to use words like

15:19

scrummy, slamming, wicked. I saw this list

15:21

of words and I was like, immediately

15:23

transported to the like, pieces of flair

15:25

scene from office space. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

15:27

totally. If you're going to subject people

15:29

to this, pay them like $100,000 a

15:31

year. Oh, God.

15:34

What? I just noticed the third entry

15:36

on this list. Pimp. This

15:38

food is pimp. Yeah,

15:41

it says, it's just a list. It

15:43

says, melt in mouth, fresh pimp,

15:46

juicy, legendary, messy,

15:49

magic dollop. Whatever.

15:52

Silky, wicked, radical treasure. It could

15:54

not be more 2000s if it

15:56

tried. I know, exactly.

16:00

Remember when the word deadly was going

16:02

around as like cool like oh, that's deadly the

16:04

new album is deadly I was trying to make

16:06

malignant happen for a while One

16:15

of the things that is cut off from this

16:18

list are some other phrases including Proper

16:20

rustic. Oh, yeah, that's that's

16:22

hella artisanal homemade

16:24

no cap for real for real mega

16:27

is on the list and so

16:29

is Scrummy. Yeah,

16:31

that's something British people say even though

16:33

it sounds like an STD boy. Oh fuck. This

16:36

is like calling it. Crimbo What

16:40

are you guys doing, you know what I started

16:43

to spot in the wild lately is unfortunately I

16:46

can't make it on Thursday. Unfortunate. You really

16:48

saved yourself a lot of time I

16:51

mean, I think the headline about all of the

16:54

Jamie Oliver stuff is he is

16:56

a polarizing dude Yes, people really

16:58

love him or they really hate him. He's honestly

17:00

just seems kind of like Standard

17:02

to me. Yeah, like he sort of becomes

17:05

famous as this kind of everyman Working-class

17:07

guy making fancy food and then

17:09

eventually he becomes like a multimillionaire

17:12

and a giant empire And of course that's gonna

17:14

attract scrutiny. Yes, and like most public figures and

17:16

most corporations do not hold up to scrutiny I

17:18

think you're in a similar place that I was

17:21

at that point in the research You're taking me

17:23

on a journey. None of them are get this guy

17:25

off our TVs immediately kind of right

17:27

shit necessarily, right? Right. It's a tale

17:30

as old as time that like

17:32

dudes like this get to

17:34

make big mistakes That would absolutely end

17:36

the careers of people who had less

17:38

power and less privilege than him and

17:41

yet He just gets more money He

17:43

just gets more famous right like all

17:45

of these things just sort of keep

17:47

accruing and accruing and accruing right question

17:50

How does he generally deal with these things

17:52

because of course people are gonna fuck up

17:55

as public figures, whatever does he just like Apologize

17:57

like yeah, I shouldn't done the Empire toast. It was fucking crazy

18:00

I'm really sorry or is he like weird about like

18:02

pushing back against his critics and all this kind of stuff

18:04

He gets really defensive and I think that's part of

18:06

what sets people off Yeah There's a

18:08

quote that he gives at one point where he's like

18:10

sometimes I think it would actually be easier to be

18:12

somebody like Gordon Ramsay whose persona

18:15

is like a miserable bastard. I think

18:17

he's correct about that. Honestly I think

18:19

he's right, but he's saying it after

18:21

he's talking about like wage theft. Yeah

18:24

after he's like he's using it as

18:26

a defense Yeah, and you're like I

18:28

think you're right But I don't think that's

18:30

the main issue. Yeah, so those

18:32

are the general critiques of Jamie

18:35

Oliver We're about to dive in

18:37

to Jamie's school

18:39

dinners and Jamie's Ministry of Food

18:41

his to UK shows about feeding

18:43

kids both of which I've seen you've

18:46

seen both of them Yeah back in my Jamie Oliver

18:48

days. I mean this would have been like more than 10

18:50

years ago, though I mean I saw them when they when

18:52

they aired I'll tell you what I have not because that

18:54

shit has been scrubbed from the internet wait Really

18:56

even if you have a VPN even if

18:59

you're willing to pay for it Even if

19:01

even if you can find little clips, but you

19:03

cannot find the whole shows It's wild that

19:05

and plannedemic are the Watchfully

19:08

better than the internet plan that make

19:10

you can get at their website It's

19:12

actually the easiest thing to get you

19:14

just can't get on YouTube. No way

19:17

I want to sort of take you through a little bit

19:19

of the genesis of school meals in the

19:21

UK and sort of how they Like

19:23

what the policies around those have looked

19:25

like primary school like

19:27

just as education Isn't

19:30

made mandatory in the UK until 1870 It

19:34

was not uncommon at that point

19:36

for students to go to school underfed

19:38

or just unfed entirely particularly

19:40

poor and working-class kids by 1880

19:43

this Becomes

19:45

enough of a known problem that they

19:48

actually start piloting free school meals and

19:50

the first free school meals are served

19:52

to Poor folks and

19:54

students in Bradford. The meal

19:56

is just straight-up porridge. That's

19:58

oatmeal and The cost

20:02

was limited to one penny

20:04

per student, according to the Independent.

20:06

In today's money, that would be about

20:08

37 pence. By

20:11

1906, a liberal government passed

20:13

the Education Provision of Meals

20:15

Act, which allowed local governments

20:18

to serve free school meals.

20:21

Most of them ultimately did not provide those free

20:23

meals, and by the start of World War II,

20:26

decades later, only half

20:28

of local schools in the UK offered

20:31

free school meals. Again,

20:33

this is just like allowing people to do it

20:35

should they so choose, and many of them do

20:37

not so choose. In 1944,

20:39

a new law was passed requiring schools

20:41

to feed all children, not

20:43

just low-income kids, but all kids.

20:46

They also had nutrition standards that required them

20:48

to provide 40% of the kids daily

20:51

protein and 33% of their daily calories.

20:56

That usually looked like steak, two veg,

20:58

and a rhubarb crumble, which sounds so

21:00

fucking good. Yeah, we got hamburger and

21:02

fries for $1.25. We

21:04

got tater tot Tuesdays. Okay, I remember tater tots

21:06

too. I have not eaten

21:09

tater tot since. What? That's

21:11

such a school food for me. In

21:13

my mind, turkey tetrazzini and tater tots

21:15

are school food and cannot be consumed elsewhere.

21:17

Turkey tetrazzini. I've never seen that on a

21:19

menu anywhere else in my entire life. I

21:21

met, there are a couple of foods I

21:24

met for the first time in college. We

21:26

did not have turkey tetrazzini at school. So

21:28

I saw that for the first time at

21:30

college and I was like, what the fuck is

21:32

this fancy ass name for this goopy ass. Dude, it's

21:34

like prison food. It is goop. Midwesty

21:37

food. Yeah. The other thing I

21:39

met for the first time at college was I went through, there was like

21:41

a little sandwich bar. You know, there's like

21:43

all the savory stuff and then also the sweet stuff for making

21:45

sandwiches. And I was like, guys,

21:47

somebody really fucked up. They put some marshmallow

21:49

fluff out. I was going to school in

21:51

New England and they were like, it's a fluffernutter. And I was like, what

21:53

are you talking about? And I

21:55

absolutely thought that people were pranking me that they

21:58

went to school with peanut butter and mar- marshmallow

22:00

fluff sandwich. Dude, I still think that's a prank.

22:02

Candy sandwich. I feel like it's something like rainbow

22:04

parties where it's something that like there's a name

22:06

for it but nobody's ever actually done it. And

22:09

like nothing will convince me otherwise. In 1971,

22:11

Margaret Thatcher is around. She

22:17

removed free milk from schools. This is

22:19

sort of the beginning of the erosion

22:21

of the school lunch program. Just a

22:23

fucking nightmare of a person. So

22:26

she gets this nickname in the press that is

22:29

Thatcher the milk snatcher. It

22:31

is fully just like taking fucking milk

22:34

away from poor children. Yes. It's like

22:36

cartoon evil. By 1980,

22:38

Thatcher passes her education act

22:41

which ended the requirement to

22:43

provide school meals. Of course.

22:45

From here on out, only

22:47

kids whose parents were on

22:49

benefits or income supplements

22:51

qualified for school meals. Of

22:53

course. That is a really, really low income

22:56

threshold. And also it stigmatizes the kids because

22:58

if it's only the poor kids, like it

23:00

basically announces to all of your classmates that

23:02

you are the poor kid who doesn't have

23:04

to pay for school lunch. And actually they

23:07

later pilot like within the last, I don't

23:09

know, 15 years, they piloted a free school

23:11

lunch program again in the UK. And

23:14

they found that uptake of

23:16

school lunches was higher amongst students

23:18

in all income brackets when

23:21

it was free for everyone. There's also,

23:23

there's something, this comes up in America too, where

23:25

there's something so fucking weird about this thing

23:28

where we are providing children with free education

23:31

to the tune of billions of dollars. And then you're

23:33

like, these freeloaders want a lunch too? Yeah, and then

23:35

it's like, oh, but feeding them is like where we

23:37

draw the line and they have to fucking pay for

23:39

it. And it's like, it's so, it's like, why? Like,

23:41

why is this the fucking hill we want to die

23:43

in? Like we don't charge kids to ride the school

23:46

bus. So in

23:48

1986, the Social Security Act

23:50

passes. That may seem unrelated,

23:53

but because meals, school

23:55

meals are now means tested, right? And like

23:57

tied to an income level and a. of

24:00

benefits, they're cutting people off of benefits,

24:02

which means that the kids of those people

24:04

are losing access to free school meals.

24:06

Of course. So as a result of

24:09

this Social Security Act, half

24:11

a million kids from low-income families

24:13

lost access to free school meals.

24:15

The thing is, you've stacked the

24:17

deck because now compared to Margaret

24:19

Thatcher, Jamie Oliver seems fine. He

24:21

has been sticking food from millions

24:23

of children. He's

24:25

not a political supervillain. Yeah, the

24:27

wage stuff doesn't seem so bad

24:29

now. Without that national

24:31

mandate to provide free meals, the

24:34

systems around food shifted really dramatically

24:36

throughout the 1980s and 90s in

24:38

Britain. Schools

24:42

aren't funded the way that they need to be at

24:44

any point in this, certainly not school food programs. So

24:46

there's kind of a race to the bottom

24:49

price-wise that happens, right? Where schools are like,

24:51

oh, fuck. Our federal mandate went

24:53

away, which means that some amount of federal funding went away,

24:55

which means we got to get this shit on the cheap,

24:57

right? And this is also when

24:59

a famed star slash

25:02

villain, depending on who you ask,

25:04

of UK school food comes around,

25:06

the Turkey Twizzler. Oh, God, yes.

25:08

This was a big thing in the show. This

25:11

was a big thing in the show. We'll talk about

25:13

the Turkey Twizzler in a minute. Oh, my God. Do

25:16

you know what I remember about the West Virginia one,

25:18

the version of this that he did in America? What?

25:21

There was a whole thing where it was

25:23

like kids were bringing lunchables to school, but

25:25

the show had to bleep the word lunchable.

25:27

I don't know what the legality is or if they

25:30

were just like two chicken shit, but it was like

25:32

Jamie went on this big, long rant about like kids

25:34

being fucking lunchables to school because they're so unhealthy. But

25:36

it was like they're bringing back to school, but you

25:38

could tell he was saying lunchable. They replaced a

25:40

bunch of it with packed lunch. Oh, really?

25:42

As a person who just watched it. They

25:44

dubbed it? There is such funny ADR in

25:46

the US one. It's so funny. That's like,

25:48

remember when you used to watch Die Hard

25:50

on TV and it would be like Yippee

25:54

Kye, a terrible person, melon

25:56

farmer. Yeah. By

25:58

this point in the early 2000s. Nutritional

26:00

standards for school meals in the UK

26:03

have been pretty well decimated.

26:05

They're not non-existent, but they are a shell

26:07

of their former selves. That's

26:09

when Jamie's School Dinners premieres.

26:12

Jamie's School Dinners is

26:15

a four-episode docu-series that airs

26:17

on the BBC in early 2005, in February

26:20

and March of 2005. It

26:23

is set at Kidbrook Comprehensive School in

26:25

Greenwich, which is a borough of London.

26:28

Schools are sort of like US public schools. The

26:31

daily budget for students

26:33

at Kidbrook was 37 pence

26:37

per child per day. Adjusted

26:39

for inflation, that is functionally the

26:42

same budget as those 1880s meals

26:45

in Bradford. He gets into the schools. He

26:47

does this sort of song and dance that

26:49

he ends up doing at several other schools.

26:51

This is part of the US one as

26:54

well. He revamps the

26:56

school menu. He has a day where

26:58

the existing school menu goes head-to-head with

27:00

his new healthy menu. And

27:02

all the kids pick the foods they know. Aw

27:04

shucks. And he's like, okay, well then

27:07

we just have to keep going. We got to make

27:09

even better healthy, quote-unquote healthy food. Weirdly,

27:11

almost every meal that I see him

27:14

serve in these clips and meals includes

27:16

like a green salad with plain vinaigrette

27:18

as one of the options. And I'm

27:20

like, buddy, in what world did you

27:22

think six-year-olds were going to be like,

27:24

yum, yum, meet it up? Get him

27:26

some like carrots or something, like some

27:28

like nice roasted veggies. You could do

27:30

some, make a stir fry that has

27:32

vegetables in it with a good sauce.

27:34

Like there's a bunch of ways to

27:36

do this. A like French

27:39

style, likely dressed beer

27:41

green salad is

27:44

like maybe not the like easy entry point.

27:46

I'm a 40-year-old man and I would skip

27:48

that. So one of the most famous images

27:51

that comes out of this is

27:53

not only of students sort of rebelling

27:55

against the menu, but of parents. I'm

27:57

sending you a. picture.

28:00

Oh, I know what this is gonna be. You do. I

28:02

do. Cause this is such a

28:04

big deal in the British media. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

28:07

Oh, it is. This is

28:09

a fucked up thing where like parents would

28:11

pass their kids candy

28:13

bars like through the

28:15

school fence. Yeah. People report different things.

28:17

This one appears to be burgers. People

28:20

say other passing a chips, okay, whatever

28:22

it is. It's like foods

28:24

that those kids shouldn't be having to

28:26

the point that there are like daily

28:28

male pieces about the woman who has

28:30

foregrounded the mom in this picture being

28:32

like, now our kids are fat. Now

28:34

what? And you're like, Oh my God.

28:38

If parents want to send their kids to school with

28:40

whatever food they have, that honestly seems fine to me.

28:42

Like whatever, but it, it's like, if

28:44

kids are in your care, you should be feeding them

28:46

healthy stuff. That's not fucking deranged, but

28:49

it's weird that these became stories. Like I

28:51

feel like the right wing media was like really

28:53

against him like doing this

28:56

in this way that like, how dare this celebrity metal? But it's

28:58

also like he's trying to get kids to eat fruits and

29:00

vegetables. Are you really fucking against this? I

29:02

think another thing that happened in

29:04

Jamie's school dinners, and this also happens in

29:06

the US version, he is

29:08

dramatically increasing the workload of school

29:11

cooks and then sort of characterizing

29:14

them as sticks in the mud and or lazy.

29:16

Yeah. They object

29:18

so strenuously that some of them threatened

29:20

to resign. To be fair, having some

29:22

fucking reality show person coming in and

29:24

fucking cameras in my job, I feel

29:26

like I would also rebel against this.

29:30

And it's like some dude with a bunch of

29:32

money telling you without a bunch of money and

29:34

resources how to fucking do it. You'd be like,

29:36

give me a break, dude. Get out of

29:39

town. It also shows the extent to

29:41

which these problems are so entrenched that

29:43

even somebody with the clout of Jamie

29:45

Oliver can't really come in and fix

29:47

them. Right? Because on some level, yeah, you want

29:49

to be feeding the kids healthier food, but it's really

29:51

not a problem of like the lunch ladies being

29:53

better. It's like a much broader problem

29:55

of like, they should be hiring more lunch

29:57

ladies and having different training. You

30:00

did. Can't solve this stuff. By the

30:02

rating, people in like the School Kitchen

30:04

can you solve it with a boot

30:06

camp for school cook Swan Dive The

30:08

catering division of the British. Army Is that

30:10

what they did in the show? They bring in

30:12

the Catering division of the British Army. To.

30:15

Show them how to cook large amounts

30:17

of food efficiently. I think I ever

30:19

learned that sounds like ah yes, the

30:21

famously delectable food of the are positive

30:24

for this am his. Health

30:28

Affairs. Now I get why does this

30:30

taken off the internet? This is really

30:32

bad I I I do not remember

30:34

all of this like problematic shit probably

30:36

because I was really prof must accept

30:38

and. Also, here's

30:40

the other thing and they really don't

30:42

like the sort of acknowledge. It in

30:45

the shows themselves but they

30:47

never really digging on it's.

30:49

he just fucking explodes. The

30:51

budget. Oh right, of course it is.

30:53

blows. The thought: he's not making these meals

30:55

for. Thirty seven pounds. He's just

30:58

not right. He's making much more

31:00

expensive foods and is working folks

31:02

really hard without any additional extra

31:04

staff. Or pay enemies Like look

31:07

how easy it is and how

31:09

I minored I'm not getting paid.

31:11

More and we don't have the money for this

31:13

shit. Yeah and that's a whole fucking point is

31:15

that people would be doing better meals if they

31:17

had the resources use. His comment a bit like

31:20

user make better meal without the the resources to

31:22

match as part of the show. One of the

31:24

things that. Happens. On the show is

31:26

that he confronts a dude from

31:28

one of the nation's largest distributors

31:30

of school foods. It's called Scholar.

31:32

Rest are school. The rest they're

31:34

the ones who make turkey twizzlers.

31:36

Or a turkey twizzlers. Like a chicken

31:38

nugget kind of thing. but instead of being

31:41

in boot or oval shape right? it

31:43

is in a corkscrew sort of shape. It

31:45

looks like a little pigs tales. It is

31:47

a mainstay of Uk school meals at

31:49

this point as is like had a a

31:52

deep fried. Breaded like took effect

31:54

turkey thick. it is worth noting

31:56

that turkey twizzlers or a distinct

31:58

sleep last food. In the Uk

32:00

I would think about for us analog

32:02

I might about Mountain Dew. Always outclassed.

32:05

It is a Mountain Dew. There's like a gender.

32:07

There's a race. There's a class. There's like a

32:09

kind of person. That can we the really is there. I was

32:11

not aware of this. Not do it or not. think. about this

32:13

whole i disagree like three mound as a day.

32:17

Or or they from Five Foot Four

32:19

game and as I said as are

32:21

there no I mean I think Mountain

32:24

Dew is often a use and like

32:26

political cartoons and shit like that to

32:28

denote like a stupid poor person as

32:30

a member of the drinking mount you

32:32

to give you a six assists and

32:34

well my people, the response or the

32:36

company is really funny and Sally's it's

32:39

always fascinating to me when terrible actors

32:41

appropriate anti diet rhetoric or sort of

32:43

like wind up using it soon. The.

32:45

Company said in a statement quote We believe that

32:47

there is no one food that is bad for

32:49

you and it is the balance of. Food

32:51

you eat that makes for good or

32:54

bad diet. Third, doing sort. Of like

32:56

and all foods this sort of

32:58

approach hashtag. Offers matter here. I'm

33:00

gonna send you a little. Example.

33:03

Of the way that. People were

33:05

talking about Turkey twizzlers in the

33:08

media following this show. Okay says.

33:11

One. Third, Turkey, Two thirds Twizzlers.

33:13

The product contains turkey, thirty

33:15

four percent water, pork, fat,

33:17

Rusk coding, and then it

33:19

lists like four thousand fucking

33:21

ingredients. Vegetable. Oil Turkey

33:23

Skyn Salt Wheat. Flour

33:25

Dextrose Stabilizer Mustard Yeast

33:28

extract, antioxidants hey it's

33:30

good for you or

33:32

of extracts, spice extract

33:34

and color. So. Just

33:36

like a bunch your shit, it's

33:38

like this: This list of ingredients

33:40

is probably like twenty five. Saying

33:42

this appears in like every article

33:44

about Turkey Twizzlers. Oh yeah, that

33:46

time. people are just like get

33:49

a of this list of ingredients yeah

33:51

it is doing this release facile really

33:53

common critique of foods at the time

33:55

soon as a sort of the quantum

33:58

hook frankenfoods era rights it's easy

34:00

to go. These are scientific and

34:02

therefore sort of foreign sounding names.

34:04

Right. Right. The implication of stuff

34:06

like this is that if you

34:09

don't recognize the name of an

34:11

ingredient, it is inherently sinister. Right.

34:14

And also harmful to your health. Yeah.

34:17

Right? But there's not any real

34:19

analysis of like, this thing is in it at

34:21

this quantity, which is known to have these

34:23

effects. Like people are not doing that. They're

34:25

just like, look at this fucking lotus shit.

34:27

Yeah. The thing is when you have to

34:29

feed kids for fucking 37p, you're going to have food with

34:33

a bunch of like fillers in it. Yeah. This

34:35

is the output of like the choices you've made

34:37

politically. So the company that

34:40

makes turkey twizzlers ends up first

34:42

cutting the fat content in turkey twizzlers. They're like, okay,

34:44

okay, okay. We'll make them lower fat, which is like

34:46

a very 2000s thing, right? Yeah.

34:50

There's a quote from the managing director that

34:52

I'm like, you're a piece of shit who

34:54

runs a giant food company, but also you're

34:56

not wrong in this one instant. I'm going

34:58

to send it to you. The then

35:01

managing director, David Joel, insisted

35:03

at the time that the company had been unfairly treated.

35:05

Turkey is the least fatty of all

35:08

meats. He said the new twizzlers have

35:10

only a third of the fat level of

35:12

the average pork sausage. Yet you don't

35:14

hear Jamie Oliver telling people not to

35:16

eat sausages. This is true. That's

35:19

like a fair point. That is a fair

35:21

point. Right. Like pork sausages, a real

35:23

cornerstone of British cuisine. Pork

35:25

sausages would have been served in his parents' pub.

35:28

Those are like, okay foods. And

35:30

Jamie Oliver is not telling people not to eat

35:32

sausage. And in fact, in a number of these

35:34

schools he goes in and he's like in

35:36

the US one, he goes, oh, they're

35:38

having pizza for breakfast? And

35:41

he says at one point, it's not

35:43

so much what's in the pizza. It's

35:45

the fact that it's pizza for

35:47

breakfast. It's sending all the wrong

35:49

signals. And then he goes in and

35:51

makes a meal. And one of the first things that he

35:53

makes is pasta with red sauce and cheese.

35:56

So basically pizza with

35:58

boiling water. of an oven, right?

36:00

He's doing this sort of very 2000s and 2010s thing of like, we

36:02

gotta handle

36:08

the number of fat kids. There have

36:11

to be fewer fat kids. Therefore,

36:13

just throw shit at the wall. And the

36:15

shit to throw at the wall is the stuff

36:17

that feels right to you.

36:20

It feels right to you that

36:22

these sort of like foods that

36:24

are processed in this way and that have this long list

36:26

of ingredients are worse than

36:29

a pork sausage, which is also very

36:31

processed. I mean, the thing is, I'm actually

36:33

like, I don't think kids should be eating

36:36

chicken nuggets, which is basically what turkey twitters

36:38

are. Like at school, I also don't

36:40

think they should have like chocolate milk at school.

36:42

I think they should be getting like very nutritious,

36:44

well-made meals. I also feel like another like very

36:46

early 2000s thing about this is that there

36:49

was a fantasy that you could solve these

36:51

problems without investing extra money. Yeah, I feel

36:54

like the school lunches problem is mostly a

36:56

problem of money. This is the

36:58

credit where credits do section. This

37:01

show really leads to some real change in

37:03

the UK. On the show, he meets with

37:05

Tony Blair, who's the prime minister at the time. He

37:07

secures 280 million

37:10

pounds for school meals. That

37:12

is genuinely a huge deal. It's

37:14

really good. It shouldn't take a celebrity

37:16

having a TV show to do it.

37:19

But it happened. And that's a

37:22

net benefit, right? It

37:24

also leads to the establishment of a National Children's

37:26

Food Trust, which was operational from 2005 until 2017.

37:29

There's also some conflicting data on the

37:35

impact of Jamie's school dinners and that

37:37

whole sort of shift. There

37:39

is one study over the course of

37:41

a year that shows that more

37:44

students, like slightly more students, it's like five or

37:46

6% more students get

37:48

kicked into a higher grade bracket,

37:50

right? Like they're sort of like generally

37:52

scoring higher than they were, but it's

37:55

small. Yeah. And then there's a bunch

37:57

of other studies that show some backsliding, like

37:59

almost immediately. Oh, okay. So the

38:01

effects on student performance, I think,

38:04

are disputed and murky at best.

38:07

One of the great finds in my research

38:09

on Jamie's School Dinners and Ministry

38:11

of Food was a phenomenal piece

38:16

from a former student

38:18

at Kidbrook that

38:20

was published in Eater London. Okay.

38:23

Who was like, I was at

38:25

this school when this show was

38:27

filmed. Okay. One of the famous

38:29

sort of scenes in the show

38:31

is him showing vegetables to kids

38:33

and them guessing

38:35

incorrectly as to what those vegetables are. And

38:37

he's like, oh no. I remember

38:40

that. Yeah. The Eater

38:42

piece says, quote, in another memorable

38:44

piece of sneering superiority, friends of

38:46

mine were pulled into a classroom

38:48

and asked to identify vegetables. What

38:51

the editors decided to air was

38:53

a blooper reel of misidentified broccoli

38:55

edited together to make it look

38:57

like the burger fiends had never

39:00

seen fresh food. The

39:02

reality was that there were students in the room

39:04

who identified produce correctly, but in most

39:06

cases, these examples were not included in

39:09

the montage, which aired. Of course. Yeah.

39:12

Yeah. Yeah. That's

39:14

where they walk around a mall or whatever and they ask Americans,

39:16

like, can you find Iraq on a map? Yeah. And it's like

39:19

they only use the times that people can't do it

39:21

to be like, oh, Mary, look how dumb Americans are.

39:23

Like, it is very standard issue reality

39:25

TV and sort of cherry picking

39:27

of like the most dramatic shit.

39:30

I don't want to like over blow

39:32

it on that front, but it's stepping

39:34

into a context of classism that

39:37

is reinforcing really

39:39

regressive shitty ideas

39:42

about poor and working class people. This

39:44

is such an amazing example of how like

39:46

when you have a real social problem, a

39:49

celebrity and a reality show

39:51

are literally the worst ways to address it.

39:54

Can you imagine like a documentary

39:57

about the same thing that would have

39:59

been? would have actually like educated

40:01

the audience whereas a reality show of

40:03

course they're gonna fucking edit it in this way

40:05

like of course they're gonna set up these fucking

40:07

stunts there's a scene in the West

40:10

Virginia season where

40:12

he like opens up

40:14

this mom's fridge and freezer

40:16

and there are just like a bunch of frozen

40:19

pizzas in it and he's like this is disgusting

40:21

I can't believe you're feeding your kids this you're

40:23

killing your kids by feeding them this stuff and

40:26

he then cooks all of the food

40:28

he fries all the corn dogs he bakes all

40:30

the pizzas and he piles them up on their

40:32

kitchen table and it's like look at this look

40:34

how disgusting it is like a month's worth of

40:36

food Jamie anything is gonna be a big pile

40:39

on the table if you cook it all at

40:41

once right and he's like it's all brown it's

40:43

all the same color and but yeah this

40:46

is a very frequent interaction that

40:48

he has on each of these

40:50

shows and actually we're gonna watch

40:52

one of them from Jamie's

40:54

Ministry of Food which is the

40:56

one in Yorkshire okay so in

40:59

Ministry of Food Jamie Oliver says that

41:01

he wants to make rather them the

41:04

culinary capital of the UK and the

41:07

way that he's going to do that

41:09

is by teaching its residents how to

41:11

cook right we're gonna watch a little

41:13

clip the clippy clip of

41:16

one of the many trips that

41:18

Jamie Oliver makes into the

41:20

homes of like low income

41:22

moms yeah sorry he really

41:24

bleak sorry pal Natasha

41:27

has never cooked a meal for her

41:29

children Kaya and Robbie dinner

41:32

is nearly always a cabana give

41:34

me the lowdown then could like the fact

41:36

that you've sort of left let us turn

41:39

up tells me that your own minded and

41:41

you might yeah right so you're sick of the

41:44

junk food you're sick of the repetition right

41:46

in what sort of way well

41:48

she's not alpha she's at being in twice

41:51

for tea take a nap because of rottos

41:53

a combat right what's your favorite pop doctor

41:56

petal will love it don't we and what happens

41:58

if you don't do nothing about it Where do

42:00

you see it going? I see her

42:02

being obese. I see her being really,

42:04

really unhealthy. Really. And

42:06

it's not good. So how much... Are you

42:09

on a budget? Right budget. To be

42:11

honest, if you're spending 12 quid, 10

42:13

quid a night, seven days a week, that's 70 quid. I know.

42:15

That's quite a lot of money, actually. Just on food. I only

42:17

get eight, around a week as it is. Yeah. So you get

42:20

eight quid of it. I get eight quid. I'm

42:22

on benefits. You're on benefits. So,

42:25

as you can tell, I'm spending more

42:27

than what I get. I don't know.

42:29

I just know I can't keep doing it. I really

42:31

don't want to do it. I don't want to do it ever again.

42:34

I want to run out to cook and just be

42:36

healthy. Yeah. Like

42:39

she's on cuffed her ball.

42:41

This thing happens in

42:43

every episode that I was able

42:45

to see. There was

42:47

a great op-ed that I read about this

42:49

that was just like, when you are this

42:52

poor, your entire life is no. Your

42:54

kids are having a birthday. Can you have a birthday party? No. A

42:57

new movie is coming out and you want to see it. Can you

42:59

see it? No. Food is

43:01

like one of the only

43:04

affordable pleasures that people have

43:06

when they have absolutely, like,

43:09

deeply limited access to almost

43:12

everything else in their lives.

43:15

His response to this isn't to go, oh,

43:17

holy shit, you're on benefits and you only

43:20

get 80 pounds a week? Yeah. Like, you

43:22

got to get a cooking class. Yeah. This

43:24

is a show that's produced for an audience.

43:27

And this plays into a

43:29

long-standing dynamic of more class

43:32

privileged people sort of leering at

43:34

what poor people eat. Dude, I know.

43:36

It feels really Victorian. This is like

43:38

a fundamentally conservative approach and fundamentally like

43:40

not an upstream approach, right? It says

43:43

it's talking about systems and it's proposing,

43:45

once again, as so many things on

43:47

this show have, an individual

43:49

solution to a systemic problem. There's also

43:51

an interesting shift in him, too, because the

43:54

first show seemed like it

43:56

at least somewhere acknowledged that, like, this

43:58

is a resources issue. We need

44:00

to go right to the top and like talk to Tony Blair about

44:02

giving more money to this But then by the time we get to

44:04

Ministry of Food It seems like he's

44:06

basically abandoned that and it's like let's teach

44:08

people to cook It just feels like he is

44:10

sort of losing the thread right and or He's

44:13

following the threat of reality TV and losing

44:15

the threat of like policy solutions Right and

44:18

like actually fixing the problem because

44:20

ultimately his job is to make a TV show Yeah,

44:22

yeah of the day the people who are paying him are people

44:24

who are paying him for a TV show Right

44:26

right in the same way that like our bottom line

44:29

is to release episodes for our listeners We're really good

44:31

at which we're really good at which we've never failed

44:33

so Our

44:35

schedules perfect so Following

44:38

his TV success in the

44:40

UK Jamie Oliver follows the

44:42

James Corden path Yeah

44:45

comes on over to the US right

44:47

there like look we have poor people

44:49

in America that we also love to

44:51

gawk at What's that let's send Jimmy

44:53

to West Virginia the first season focuses

44:55

on Huntington, West, Virginia Which

44:57

is the fattest city America right? Isn't that why they choose

44:59

it? It was listed as America's

45:02

unhealthiest city Who

45:05

decides that and he's like it's a

45:08

government statistic based on death rates. Oh

45:10

really what? But

45:13

also there is like it is true that at this

45:15

point Huntington had the nation's

45:17

highest rates of heart disease diabetes

45:19

Did the highest rate for seniors

45:21

who had lost their teeth? Oh

45:23

God this show really sort of

45:25

opened the door to some very

45:28

naked anti-fatness and classism

45:30

and Made way

45:32

for the time-honored tradition of people outside

45:34

of Appalachia sort of gawking and telling

45:36

them how they're doing it wrong. Yes,

45:39

so Jamie Oliver heads to

45:41

an elementary school in West Virginia and essentially

45:43

does Jamie's school dinners all over again.

45:45

I remember this He's like berating the

45:48

lunch ladies and then there's one lunch

45:50

lady who's like you're a celebrity You don't care

45:52

and he starts like crying. It's like I swear

45:54

on my children said I care right He

45:56

says I swear on my children's lives and she just

45:58

shakes her head and goes Don't do that. Hahaha.

46:04

Like I was so hard on the school

46:06

cooks team. I was like, yeah, man. At

46:09

one point he says, so they get

46:11

pizza for breakfast and chicken nuggets for

46:14

lunch, welcome to America. He's also

46:16

doing the whole like Americans are

46:18

gross and fat and dumb thing.

46:20

Also I make fun of Britain constantly, but

46:22

also like the problems that Britain has are

46:24

the same as the problems that America has.

46:27

I'm in no position to like talk shit.

46:29

And Jamie is similarly in no position to

46:31

talk shit. So he does his usual sort

46:33

of set of things. He does the thing

46:35

where he shows kids vegetables and they can't

46:38

say what they are. He

46:40

does the thing where he takes, there's like a dump

46:42

truck of fat and

46:44

he empties it into a dumpster in front of a

46:46

bunch of parents and kids. And they're like, this is

46:48

how much fat you're eating. It's like Oprah's

46:51

wagon of fat on steroids. But now

46:53

like two decades of reality TV have

46:56

gone by everything has to be fucking amplified.

46:58

He does a bit where he shows kids

47:00

how he says chicken nuggets are made. What

47:03

he does is he butchers the chicken. He takes off the

47:05

breasts, he takes off the legs, he takes off the wings,

47:07

blah, blah, blah. He puts the whole

47:10

chicken carcass bones and all and sort

47:12

of trimmings into a food processor.

47:14

He strains out the solids and

47:17

ends up with this bowl of like pink

47:19

goo, right? And then he adds

47:21

in flour. He

47:23

calls it stabilizers. And I was like, that's just

47:25

flour. You're just doing flour.

47:27

And then he's like, and then you have to

47:30

add a bunch of flavorings and spices so it

47:32

doesn't taste terrible. And

47:34

then you get to this very

47:36

famous clip of him asking these

47:38

kids, do you think that's good for

47:40

you or bad for you? And the kids all go,

47:42

bad. And he

47:44

goes, would you still eat it? And they

47:47

go, yeah, like all of their hands go up

47:49

like 100% of them. And

47:52

then he says, why would you eat it if

47:54

you know it's bad for you? And one of

47:56

the kids says, we're just hungry. Yeah, I wonder

47:58

if this is the real difference. Britain and

48:00

America because the famous thing

48:03

about this is that like the kids

48:05

are supposed to be like eww gross

48:07

no he leads into it by saying I'm

48:09

gonna do an experiment and this experiment works every

48:11

time the kids are supposed to say no we

48:13

don't want to eat it because it's like he's

48:15

put all this gross shit into it but then

48:17

I wonder if the real linchpin of this is

48:19

just like are the kids hungry or not are

48:22

you doing this at lunchtime and they haven't eaten

48:24

this is a real marshmallow test moment it's

48:28

worth noting that in addition to being

48:30

totally fucking hilarious this moment

48:33

also leads to a

48:35

humongous lawsuit wait really

48:37

a 1.2 billion

48:39

dollar lawsuit filed

48:42

by beef products

48:45

incorporated of course they're

48:47

a processor in South Dakota they

48:50

sue ABC ABC

48:52

ends up settling the suit for a hundred

48:55

and seventy seven million dollars no way

48:57

so it was easier just right to check

48:59

I guess when you watch it now there

49:01

is a very clear ADR insert

49:04

of Jamie Oliver saying luckily this is not

49:06

the way they're made in America it's

49:12

so clumsy it's clearly like the room

49:14

tone is all wrong yeah

49:16

wrong I'm like buddy you're running this

49:18

ship like a podcast get it together

49:20

this is like awesome we have to

49:22

fact-check something like

49:27

a youtuber who cuts in and

49:29

is like editing me yeah there

49:31

is also an incredibly

49:33

funny scene that happens at the

49:36

opening of the show where he

49:38

goes on a local radio show and the

49:40

DJ is like super

49:43

antagonistic and says things to him

49:45

like what are you gonna make us do we don't want to

49:47

sit around and eat lettuce all day okay

49:50

and at one point in the radio interview he

49:52

goes you gotta tell us what to do

49:54

who made you king and I was like

49:56

oh yeah yeah he unfortunately went on Paul

49:58

Revere radio Yeah, this is

50:00

the thing it's both very funny but also

50:02

it's sort of a hallmark of

50:05

these shows that he is framing this up

50:07

as The core problem

50:09

is that people know what's good for

50:11

them and they just won't do it Yeah

50:14

at one point he talks to the

50:16

food services director for the school district

50:18

and is like Why are you feeding

50:20

these kids such terrible food? It's unconscionable

50:22

and she's like well We have

50:25

to meet USDA federal standards and

50:27

we have a really tight budget And

50:29

his response is genuinely

50:32

well, I just came here to feed kids. I

50:34

didn't know I had to take a math test Complicated

50:39

he's like, okay Poindexter you just got

50:41

hundreds of millions of dollars from Tony

50:43

Blair You know

50:46

that there will be mass at some yeah,

50:48

it's not a math test She's just like you have to

50:50

serve a certain amount of protein and you have to serve

50:52

a certain amount of starch I'm like, yeah, this

50:54

is not an uncommon thing, but he's like, oh shucks I'm

50:56

just a guy who showed up who wanted to cook for

50:58

some kids and you're giving me all these rules, right? I'm

51:01

just a guy who's made this my number one

51:03

social issue for years now. You

51:05

can't expect me to know what a budget is Yes

51:09

The radio DJ becomes this sort of

51:11

like recurring character in the

51:13

show and he's like I gotta get this

51:15

guy on board He's the biggest naysayer and

51:17

I gotta get him. Yeah, he takes the

51:19

radio DJ to a funeral home Okay,

51:22

see where we've gotten with health in

51:25

this country and they

51:27

talk to the funeral directors and they turn a corner

51:29

and then you just see a Very

51:32

large casket for a very fat person.

51:34

It is filmed and presented

51:37

as ludicrously large The

51:39

funeral director walks through how it won't fit in a

51:42

hearse and you actually have to get a cargo van

51:44

and none of the equipment That they have works with

51:46

it and but uh, and I'm like, you're

51:48

just saying that you're not prepared for fat people

51:50

Shouldn't they should be set up for fat

51:52

people in addition to that funeral home moment? He

51:55

also Does a whole personal

51:57

stories segment. He brings in this young

51:59

woman and her mom who

52:01

says that her dad died of

52:03

being overweight. Then

52:06

she tells the story and

52:08

she's like, he was so

52:10

concerned with his own weight that he

52:12

decided to go have gastric bypass. And

52:16

then a week after gastric bypass, he passed

52:18

out in the hall, they rushed him to

52:20

the hospital and he died at the hospital.

52:22

And I was like, I don't think that's

52:24

a death of being fat. I

52:26

think that's maybe a death of

52:28

complications of a major surgery. Yeah,

52:30

holy shit. That's actually a point

52:32

against right what you're

52:34

arguing here, right? I think

52:37

the darkest moment on

52:39

the show, and this is where I was like,

52:41

I need to stop watching and cry for a

52:43

while. As with other shows, he

52:46

picks sort of a family to like follow

52:48

around and talk to about their food choices

52:50

in this family. The dad is

52:52

a trucker, the mom raises the three kids, all

52:54

of the kids are fat. This is

52:56

the house where he cooks all their frozen

52:58

food dumps it on the table and pushes

53:00

this mom until she weeps about how she's

53:02

like killing her kids, right? He

53:05

takes their deep fryer and buries

53:07

it in the backyard. And

53:10

then he turns to the mom and he's like, you're a

53:12

church going lady, right? Why don't we pray

53:14

over it? And then later he tells the camera that he

53:16

did that just for a bit of a laugh. He's like,

53:19

I hate these people. They're like, gross. He

53:21

then takes this family to a doctor who

53:24

tells them on camera and in

53:26

front of their children that their

53:28

sixth grade middle child may

53:31

already have diabetes. That is the language

53:33

that they use on the show. The

53:35

doctor talks about all these things and

53:37

he's like, well, that just means he's

53:39

gonna have amputations. He's probably gonna go

53:41

blind. Like he names all of these things that

53:44

are possible outcomes of diabetes, but they

53:46

are outcomes when diabetes is not managed

53:49

or treated. He is presuming and

53:51

understanding that these are folks who will not

53:53

have access to healthcare. And

53:56

he's painting this like ghoulish

53:58

picture. At this point, He hasn't

54:00

even taken a blood sample. He hasn't even run

54:03

like an A1C test. He hasn't done anything. He's just

54:05

like, oh, he's got this

54:07

ring around his neck that can sometimes

54:09

be characteristic of elevated sugar levels. So

54:11

he might already have diabetes. And if he

54:13

did, these are all the things that would

54:15

happen. He says, quote, we're talking about shortening

54:18

their life by 30, 40 years. They

54:21

may be dying in their 30s. He

54:23

says to a mom about her

54:25

own kids in the absence of any

54:27

test results. They're doing this

54:29

on camera for a show that's going

54:32

to be primetime on ABC. And you

54:34

just watch this kid

54:37

wither and recede into him.

54:39

You just watch the wave

54:41

of fame take over him. And

54:44

the message is

54:46

that what fat kids need is

54:48

stigma. It's a scared, straight thing,

54:50

which is one of the least

54:52

effective ways to motivate people

54:54

to do fucking anything. It doesn't

54:57

work for drugs. It doesn't work for food.

54:59

It doesn't work for anything. And also, if it's a kid,

55:01

that kid doesn't have a lot of control over what he's

55:03

eating anyway. Jamie Oliver is using

55:05

a kind of rhetoric around

55:08

school food and parents. He

55:11

uses some of that in a New York Times

55:13

piece that runs at the time called Jamie

55:15

Oliver Puts America's Diet on a

55:17

Diet. Here's an example

55:19

of the kind of rhetoric. I

55:22

just sent you a quote. It says, we came

55:24

across a table of Krispy Kreme donuts. They're

55:26

a treat. They're to be loved, he said,

55:28

but start having them every day job done.

55:30

It's harsh to say, but these parents, when

55:32

they bend to the doctor and keep feeding

55:35

their kids inappropriate food, that is

55:37

child abuse, same as a cigarette burn

55:39

or a bruise. Dude.

55:43

Just tone it down, Jamie. It's

55:45

also worth talking about the results

55:47

in Huntington. We talked a little bit about the

55:49

results in the UK. In

55:51

Huntington, after this all went

55:53

through, 77%

55:57

of kids who were part of West Virginia

55:59

schools, who this program said

56:01

that they didn't like or eat lunch

56:03

anymore. Many of the

56:05

kids were just straight up throwing the lunch

56:07

away. So there's like a couple of

56:10

problems there, right? One is this is

56:12

a town with a high level of poverty, which

56:14

means a lot of those kids are reliant on

56:16

those meals, right? Like that's how some of those

56:18

kids are just getting fed period. And

56:21

the other problem is that because no

56:23

one was buying lunches, staff started

56:26

to get laid off. It started to be seen

56:28

as like a less essential position and they're really

56:30

strapped for cash, so they're not going to pay

56:32

people to make lunches. The kids aren't eating on

56:35

top of all of that.

56:38

His menu changes didn't meet

56:40

the USDA standards and was

56:42

way higher than the budget that they had. Oh,

56:44

so you did the same thing where you just

56:46

like, he yada, yada, yada over like the actual

56:48

constraints they're operating under. Right. And he's like, look

56:50

at how much better it can be. And it's

56:52

like, yeah, if you ignore the law

56:55

and money, I guess. It's

56:57

actually really easy to feed kids if you don't have

56:59

to think about those two things. Totally

57:02

correct. Sure, dude, whatever. There's

57:04

a couple of things to know about sort of the ending of

57:06

the show. It ends with

57:09

a big celebration in Huntington. They

57:11

do like a big high production value sort

57:13

of like festival in the town.

57:16

At that big celebration, they get a gift

57:18

of $80,000 from U.S. foods,

57:22

which is like a big food supplier

57:24

to schools in the U.S. And

57:26

they're like, we're so proud to present this giant

57:28

check for 80 grand. And

57:31

then you find out, first of all, that it's 80

57:33

grand. And second of all, that it's meant to

57:35

be split amongst all the schools in the county.

57:37

There are 26 schools in

57:39

Cabell County, West Virginia. So

57:42

that is a one time payment

57:44

of three grand. Right.

57:46

And then if you break it down like kid by kid,

57:49

it's like 75 cents. It's nothing. It's

57:51

not anything. And it's again, one time payment.

57:53

Right. Right. And they're like, oh, my God,

57:55

what a victory. Rascal Flats

57:57

concert. How much did they pay Rascal Flats more?

58:00

than ADK, they should have just given that to

58:02

the fucking kids. Jamie Oliver is very proud to

58:04

tell the camera, you know how much they did this gig for?

58:06

Nothing, because they get it. Because they want the

58:08

fat kids to be thin. He wrote. Because

58:11

they're going on ABC and it's a

58:13

press gig. Yeah, because they're getting a

58:16

shitload of free promotion. Great. At

58:18

the end of the final episode of

58:20

the US one, Jamie

58:23

receives this reporting from the

58:25

US that he's like, oh

58:28

my gosh, they're trying to

58:30

go back to processed foods in Huntington, West

58:32

Virginia. I can't believe it after all the

58:34

work that we put in. And

58:37

then I looked up the article that they're referencing

58:39

and they also end up saying this on the

58:41

show. They're like, yeah,

58:43

we had a year's worth of

58:45

food sitting in our freezer that we

58:47

had paid for. And this dude just

58:49

rolled in. Right. And

58:52

was like, make everything different. And they're like,

58:54

we already paid for this food. Right. They

58:57

were talking about like, what if we just do it

58:59

on Fridays? It's like chicken nuggets and fries. Or what

59:01

like, how do we get rid of this food? How

59:03

do we use it up and not contribute to further

59:05

food waste? He's like, well,

59:07

what do you need in order to do that? They're like,

59:09

we need them to take the food back or to trade

59:11

it out for healthier food or something. Like,

59:13

we got to work out a deal here. This is not like

59:15

an issue of like, we're just being willful. And

59:18

then he leaves that meeting and comes out and

59:20

tells the camera, imagine being an alcoholic and

59:22

saying it's all right to have a drink

59:24

on a Friday. Again,

59:26

people have been like, there are real constraints

59:28

here. We need to figure out what to

59:30

do with this food. We would like to

59:33

have other food. We would like to have

59:35

the staff to cook it and to pay

59:37

for. We would love to have all of that

59:39

money. We do not have all of that money. He seems to

59:41

think that people want to feed the kids

59:43

shitty food. I feel like it's like they

59:45

just don't have a lot of other options. Yeah.

59:48

Then he just keeps being like, well, you should have

59:50

other options then. It's like, yeah, they should.

59:53

80 pounds a week on benefits. It was the

59:55

epilogue to this and everything just reverted back to where

59:57

it was. Pretty much like a lot of.

1:00:00

stuff is just sort of back to where it

1:00:02

was before. It made a big splash and made

1:00:04

some short term changes, mostly for like a few

1:00:06

years at a time. That

1:00:08

funding, that Tony Blair funding was not

1:00:10

necessarily like renewed at the

1:00:12

same time. Yeah, I know. That's always the problem with

1:00:15

these things. Yeah. I live in a town where every

1:00:17

two years we're passing a new library levy. Yeah, same,

1:00:19

same, same. It's like save our libraries. And it's like,

1:00:21

buddies, we should just agree that libraries need money and

1:00:23

we should just give them the money that they

1:00:26

need. What? Dude, Seattle had a fucking

1:00:28

referendum of like to build a

1:00:30

seawall down on the waterfront. So like

1:00:32

the city wouldn't slide into the sea

1:00:34

and it got like 75% of the vote. It

1:00:39

was like, should the city

1:00:41

have like a giant disaster befall

1:00:43

it? And like some people were like, not

1:00:46

saying yes, but I'm not saying no. So

1:00:52

the place that I wanted to like leave

1:00:54

us for this episode, living

1:00:56

by his own values and his own code,

1:00:58

I think Jamie Oliver really thinks he's

1:01:00

doing the right thing. One of the

1:01:02

problem is he has come to that

1:01:04

decision about doing the right thing that

1:01:07

focuses on fat people and

1:01:09

fat kids. And he simply

1:01:11

will not listen to them. Right. Right.

1:01:13

He's not listening to fat people. He's not listening

1:01:15

to poor folks. He's not listening to black and

1:01:17

brown people. All of these folks

1:01:19

who have really legit critiques of him

1:01:22

and really legit requests of him. Right.

1:01:24

He is sort of either begrudgingly fulfilling

1:01:27

them or getting kind of

1:01:29

defensive or just shutting down

1:01:31

and refusing to acknowledge it. On some

1:01:33

level, I think the defense of him with this

1:01:35

stuff is that he is up against like massive

1:01:37

systemic barriers, right? The fact that

1:01:39

one fucking celebrity with one TV

1:01:41

show couldn't fix the problem of

1:01:44

like school lunches in the UK. Well,

1:01:46

like, yeah, of course. Right. That's not how

1:01:48

you're going to solve a problem like this.

1:01:50

But also it seems like people for two

1:01:52

decades have been telling him, yo, these problems

1:01:54

are systemic. They are bigger than you. And

1:01:56

he keeps just being like, well, I can

1:01:58

solve them. same thing

1:02:00

over and over again. Right. Have you tried

1:02:02

using a walk? Yeah.

1:02:04

Yeah. Maybe the people yelling at Jamie Oliver just

1:02:06

need to put it in terms that he understands

1:02:08

and be like, Jamie, if you could incorporate

1:02:11

the realities of the United Kingdom into

1:02:13

your work, that would be wicked scrummy. I don't

1:02:17

think that's correct. I

1:02:19

believe it's nothing. Yeah.