Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution
A chef's campaign to change America's eating habits.
From March 2010 to summer 2011, ABC aired the reality series Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, known in the UK as Jamie's American Food Revolution. Co-produced by Oliver and Ryan Seacrest, the show documented the chef's mission to overhaul US school lunches, tackle obesity, and shift American eating habits toward healthier, longer lives.
Quick Facts
- Genre
- Reality
- Creator
- Jamie Oliver
- Country
- United States
- Language
- English
- Seasons
- 2
- Episodes
- 12
- Executive producers
- Ryan Seacrest, Jamie Oliver
- Location
- Huntington, West Virginia (season 1); Los Angeles, California (season 2)
Facts from the source article.
Premise
Jamie Oliver, a British celebrity chef and health advocate, launched a grassroots campaign in the United States to fight obesity, which became the basis for a television series. The show first aired on ABC on March 21, 2010, and later appeared on Channel 4 in the UK on September 13, 2010, on Fox Life Greece in November 2010, and on Raisat Gambero Rosso Channel in Italy in January 2011. The first season centered on Huntington, West Virginia, a city statistically ranked among the nation's unhealthiest. In an early promotional clip, Oliver asked first-grade students to name common fruits and vegetables, and they could not. The series seemed to draw from two of his earlier UK campaigns: Jamie's Ministry of Food and Jamie's School Dinners. For its second season, the show moved to Los Angeles, California, which has the second-largest public school district in the United States. Much of that season dealt with the Los Angeles Unified School District board of education repeatedly refusing Oliver permission to film in schools, leading him to find inventive workarounds. In an episode broadcast on April 12, 2011, Oliver condemned the use of pink slime in American ground beef and school lunches. He explained what the substance was and why he found it repulsive, using artistic license by dipping beef trimmings in liquid ammonia instead of the gaseous ammonia used in the industry. Oliver stated that no one—schoolchildren, soldiers, or senior citizens—wants pink slime in their food once they know about it. In response, the American Meat Institute and Beef Products Inc. released a three-minute promotional video on YouTube.
Reception
Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution earned an Emmy for Outstanding Reality Program and was also up for the Do Something TV Show Award from VH1 in 2010, thanks to its push for healthier eating in public schools. The show got a second season of six episodes, ordered on September 2, 2010, and it kicked off on April 12, 2011, at 8 pm Eastern. But low ratings killed it after just two episodes, with ABC swapping in reruns of Dancing with the Stars. The network aired the leftover four episodes that June, which meant viewers in the UK on Channel 4 saw episodes 3 through 6 before Americans did.
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