British TV chef in food fight with LA schools (AP)

Saturday, March 5, 2011 2:01 PM By dwi

LOS ANGELES – British celebrity chef Jamie jazzman has perfected his anti-obesity instruction over the years: blend a passion for nutrition with actuality TV, adorn with a catchy moniker, et voila! — "Food Revolution."

But Oliver's instruction has uncharacteristically curdled since he arrived in Los Angeles last fall to dispense his ordinal U.S. TV series. "I've had a thickened time here," he conceded wearily in an interview. "Nothing that was designed has become off."

The six-episode exhibit was to revolve around digit of Oliver's selection causes — making edifice lunches meliorate — but ran low a rolling mark when the Los Angeles Unified School District objected to the chef's key fixings — TV cameras.

"We're interested in Jamie jazzman the matter activist, not Jamie the actuality TV star," said Robert Alaniz, regularise spokesman. "We've solicited him to work with our menu committee, but there's likewise much drama, likewise much offend with a actuality show."

It was quite a sophisticate for Oliver.

The 35-year-old is a bag study backwards home, where he's been decorated by the Queen and grilled at 10 Downing Street. He heads a multimillion-dollar eponymously branded corp that has produced 20 TV information and specials, 14 bestselling cookbooks, 20 restaurants, preparation schools, a catering company, an clothing of preparation and dining products, supermarket endorsements, as substantially as a benevolence for underprivileged youth.

You'd never undergo it, though, from his tousled hair that looks same he just rolled discover of bottom and a wardrobe of jeans and material shirts. The one-of-the-lads conduct underscores the solemnity of his movement for home, not haute, cuisine.

The son of a publican, he grew up preparation "pub grub." He quit edifice at 16, after struggling for eld with dyslexia and hyperactivity, and registered in catering college. In 1999, he landed his prototypal TV exhibit "The Naked Chef" after the BBC was photography the edifice where he was employed and saw he was an on camera natural.

Oliver's concept is simple: obesity kills and preparation meals from irritate using firm ingredients module spend lives. It's a communication he wields with zeal in bag kitchens, edifice classrooms, and joint boardrooms.

He encourages the matter industry to conceive that lovesome crapper be commercial.

"They crapper attain ethical modify that module genuinely agitate toward upbeat and absent from obesity," said Oliver, who's in unceasing motion_ even seated his handicap bounces furiously.

School lunches are a assets passion for Oliver, a ascendant of four. He revamped cafeteria preparation in kingdom and then turned his sights to Huntington, West Virginia, for his prototypal U.S.-based TV exhibit after an Associated Press enquiry labeled the Atlantic America's unhealthiest.

Part of the exhibit focused on a menu makeover in author County Schools, a 12,700-student district. It wasn't easy, said Jedd Flowers, regularise spokesman.

Oliver's recipes didn't adhere to land standards, matter costs were higher and newborn suppliers had to be located, staff had to be rejiggered and newborn equipment bought — a $200,000 industrialized potato peeler, for warning — to follow to the freshly embattled mandate.

Cabell County kids weren't enamored of newborn dishes same honey carrots and more started bringing brown-bag lunches. Lunch participation has since rebounded as kids' tastebuds are getting utilised to the newborn food, which includes jazzman recipes same creamy coleslaw and chile con carne, Flowers said.

"He had the children's interests at heart. The calibre of the matter is much better," he said. "But the TV exhibit was quite an ordeal. It was disruptive and utilised gimmicks. I can't feature the television exhibit was a benefit, but hunting at the impact was."

Oliver decided to ordered his ordinal U.S. information in Los Angeles, bag to the nation's second-largest edifice district, which enrolls 650,000 mostly low-income children and serves 1.2 meg meals daily.

"It's much an awful turn of meals a day," said the chef.

The regularise said no. A previous acerbic undergo with actuality exhibit "School Pride," which utilised reenactments of made up incidents and left the edifice regularise with a bill, factored into Superintendent Ramon Cortines' decision, as substantially as reports from author County Schools, regularise spokesman Alaniz said.

However, West President Preparatory High School in Central Los Angeles, which is separate by noncommercial MLA Partner Schools low lessen with LAUSD, allowed jazzman on campus as a curriculum addition. After digit weeks of filming, the regularise caught wind of it and booted the show.

"We aren't happy most it," said Mike McGalliard, chair of MLA Partner Schools. "I told the regularise you guys are making a bounteous perturbation over nothing. It's not an expose. It's an incredible program."

Nearly half of West President students are obese, he said, and all qualify for liberated lunches which feature items much as cowardly nuggets and callus dogs, with sides same nakedness broccoli.

Oliver planted a accord garden, mentored culinary arts students, lectured most assets size, caloric intake and diet-related disease, and ordered up a nearby accord kitchen to provide liberated classes in preparation fare much as roast chicken.

"They conceive Jamie is the threat. The danger is diabetes and broad cholesterol," said grownup Caleb Villanueva, 17.

Sophia Ruvalcaba, 17, who has diabetes, as do her care and sister, said jazzman came to their bag for dinner. "He was just disagreeable to attain a meliorate nutrition for us," she said.

Oliver said he's not disagreeable to cast the edifice regularise in a intense light. He calls his call "documentary with stunts." For example, he filled a edifice bus with 57 heaps of white sand to represent the turn of sugar LAUSD kids children spend weekly in tasteful milk.

Those kind of made-for-TV stunts are exactly what LAUSD finds unappetizing.

Alaniz said the regularise remains selection to work with jazzman — soured camera. They've advisable that he lend his expertise by coming up with threesome weeks of nutrition plans, adhering to the district's matter budget of 77 cents per nutrition and land standards.

Alaniz noted the regularise has been on its possess culinary push for years, forbidding fling foods, soda, additives, dyes and certain fats and oils. Next year, cowardly nuggets and dish module be condemned soured the cafeteria lineup, replaced by student-taste-tested dishes much as Calif. sushi roll, cowardly tandoori, and Asiatic couscous and veggie salad.

Oliver, however, is not digit to provide up a matter fight.

He has a aggroup of chefs employed on the district's menus and hopes the newborn caretaker slated to verify over in Apr module be more flexible. In the meantime, he's setting up quaternary more accord kitchens around LA, funded by the dweller Heart Association at a outlay of most $180,000 each, to offer liberated preparation classes, and module be attractive his ambulatory kitchen ordered up in an 18-wheeler around Southern California.

"I want the dweller open to expect more," he said. "It strength verify a pair eld to intend there, but I'm deeply passionate that when everyone comes together, clog changes."


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