Jamie has changed the way I think about food.

When I watched School Dinners on television, it changed the way I think about food.  Working in Public Health, we are constantly trying to find new ways to tackle the obeisity epidemic.  School Dinners, and the projects Jamie has undertaken since then really hit home with the solution. In North America, we always jump on the low-fat, low-calorie, exercise until you drop bandwagon.  And we end up totally missing the largest culprit--manufactured, processed food.  We have a tendency to cut calories, only to replace them with cardboard "diet" food.  I am surrounded by women that fill themselves with frozen, low-calorie, fat-free, cheesecakes, and rice cakes and baked crisps, and yet scream bloody murder when they see me bring out the olive oil. or the butter.  And what good does it do to ferry little Johnny back and forth to Football practice, when somewhere in the heart of America a board room full of fatcats is plotting to bombard him during commercial breaks with advertisements for the new KFC Flavor Bowl?  Have you seen this thing?  A plastic bowl full of mashed potaotes and popcorn chicked, smothered in gravy and topped with grated processed cheese!! Oh sorry, and they threw in some corn niblets for the veggie factor. It rings in at 740 calories, 320 of which come from fat!  54% of your daily value of fat, and, are you ready for this, 2350 mgs or 98% !!!! of your daily value of sodium. 

If you ask me, food manufacturers need to be held more accountable for the foods that they pander to society.  If you build it, they will come, so to speak.  People eat that food because it is out there. Some of the mom's in School Dinners spoke of the notion that as long as the belly is full, it doesn't matter what it is full of.  Really, why is it necessary to produce things like Turkey Twizlers, Chicken Bowls, deep fried Mars Bars, and chicken fried steak smothered in gravy?

Jamie Oliver said it best while making an appearance on CityLine, here in Toronto--It's not Olive Oil that is killing us.  It'a all the manufactured and processed crap that we eat instead.  Natural, organic, unprocessed foods are the only way to go.