Jamie Oliver, the British celebrity chef who started a healthy-eating revolution in British schools, presents his ideas for battling America’s obesity epidemic in this video.
Oliver, who brought his crusade to teach children to make healthy food choices to America in 2010, takes the stage at the TED conference to share his goal to inspire a movement with enough momentum to educate children about food, encourage families to begin cooking again and to inspire people to fight the epidemic of obesity that has taken root in every place that the western has gained popularity.
The problem has become so big that, if something doesn’t change quickly, today’s children will be the first modern generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. In fact, according to Oliver, four of the six top killers in the United States are obesity-related diseases.
Oliver traces the root of the problem to cultural changes that occurred thirty years ago. As a result of these changes, children now represent the third generation of Americans who do not know how to cook. These children are not taught the value of preparing a healthy meal from fresh ingredients and sitting down and enjoying it with family and friends. In their communities, they encounter fast food restaurants that offer unhealthy menu items. At school, according to Oliver, most children are served lunches and breakfasts that skip most fruits and vegetables in favor of highly processed, fast-food type offerings.
Oliver’s solution is to tackle the problem in all three of these arenas: the home, the community and the school. He calls upon schools to begin by teaching children about healthy eating while serving wholesome, foods prepared on-site for breakfast and lunch. Oliver wants parents to break out the grills, ovens and stir-fry pans and begin cooking again, and to share those skills with their children. Finally, he wants the government to regulate the food industry to ensure that they do business more responsibly and stop feeding Americans anything they will eat, regardless of the cost to their health.
