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Sunday 25 April 2010

Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food | Video on TED.com

If you have children, or are passionate educating children about healthy eating, then this TED video is a must watch. Jamie Oliver, with such passion and drive is actually doing something to change the unhealthy trends children are enveloped in.











There were some points that hit the heart and reignited strong feelings I've always had... After Jamie tipped a wheelbarrow full of sugar out onto the floor (demonstrating the amount of sugar in flavoured milk that a child in the US will drink at elementary school), and said,

"...judging the circumstance, any judge in the whole the world would look at the statistics and evidence and they would find any government of old guilty of child abuse. That's my belief,"  

the seriousness of the situation really dawned on me. Not the seriousness of healthy eating - I believed in that a long time. But the seriousness of health on a national level. I focus on being healthy. I'm not a fanatic, I enjoy sweet pleasures every now and then, but I do have a concept of health. 


Am I being arrogant to say I don't think everyone does have a concept of healthy eating? There have been shows on television showing unhealthy families and what they eat.. and every time it's the same... "they didn't know"... "they were never taught to cook"... "they thought it was okay"... Were they educated? Why weren't they educated?


If you watched the video, the stats that Jamie talks about ARE NOT OKAY! There shouldn't be people dying because of diet related diseases. Children shouldn't be getting fed junk at school, training them for life. Something has got to give, and it shouldn't be our health, the quality of our lives, it shouldn't be raising taxes to deal with this mess and it shouldn't be accepting what mass food manufactures are selling. 


How can we fight this? What will you do? What have you done? The conversation has started... so lets keep it going...







2 comments:

  1. I haven't watched the video but Jamie did a very similar thing in this country before doing what he is doing now. I was amazed and horrified at the amount of children who couldn't name vegetables presented to them. Not only that at one point mums were coming to the school gate and passing their children chips through the fence so that they didn't have to eat the healthy food the school was now serving as a result of Jamie's changes! I'm sure most people are perfectly aware of healthy eating they just choose the easier less healthy option :(

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  2. Hi Vicki, I gather you are from the UK now. Which is actually where I am living, though I wasn't around when Jamie exposed unhealthy habits here, so was unaware.

    It's sad and shocking.. arrr.. I guess as long as we're doing our best it might rub off?

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