Jamie Oliver Shows How Much Sugar Is in Flavored Milk
April 20, 2011 by admin
Filed under News Stories
April 20th, 2011
TVSquad.com
By: Jason Hughes
Last season, ‘Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution’ (Tue., 8PM ET on ABC) went to Huntington, W.V., one of America’s unhealthiest cities. This year, he was off to one of its largest. Once there, he met resistance at just about every corner.
The Los Angeles Unified School District — the second largest in the U.S., serving between 700,000 and 750,000 students — refused him access to their schools. None of the national fast food chains that got their start in L.A. were willing to work with him. He did get a smaller local chain to open their doors, but the owner was reluctant to make expensive changes.
In an attempt to shock them, he decided to turn his attention to the flavored milk available in the school. While the perception is that this is a healthier alternative, it actually contains as much sugar as soda. So he set up a dramatic demonstration.
He dumped a week’s worth of sugar onto and into a school bus. Unfortunately, only about 25 people showed up for the presentation, but a revolution can start with just a few.
“Yeah, I’m trying to make it dramatic because I want people to care, and at the moment it’s just us,” he said to the crowd. The lack of concern in the area was very disconcerting to him in this premiere episode, but he’s not done fighting for the kids and people of Los Angeles.
Click here for the full report from TVSquad.com
School District Bans Jamie Oliver For Promoting Healthy Diets For Children
April 5, 2011 by admin
Filed under News Stories
April 5th, 2011
The Los Angeles Times
By: Richard Verrier
British chef Jamie Oliver’s food revolution is giving LAUSD officials a case of indigestion.
The Los Angeles Unified School District has suspended all filming of reality TV shows in district schools after a standoff with the celebrity chef, who had been filming his ABC show “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” at West Adams Preparatory High School in South Los Angeles for the last two weeks.
This week the district denied Oliver’s license to film at another school, Manual Arts Senior High School, which, like West Adams, is operated by MLA Partners Schools, an organization that runs schools in South L.A. under a performance contract with LAUSD.
A person close to the production said that district Supt. Ramon Cortines would approve the permit for Oliver’s show only if he could guarantee that he knew everything about the production and that it would paint the district in a postive light.
A spokesman for FilmL.A. Inc, the nonprofit group that handles film permits for the LAUSD, said the district’s action was prompted not by any specific complaints regarding Oliver’s show but by a concern that such reality TV programs can be disruptive to students.
“Yesterday the district decided that having unscripted reality shoots while classes were still in session was probably not the best idea,” said FilmL.A. spokesman Todd Lindgren. “Reality programming is unpredictable, and the district decided that it was better to restrict that kind of programming.”
“If you look at the last series he [Oliver] did in Huntington, W.Va., it was full of conflict and drama, and we’re not interest in that,’’ LAUSD spokesman Robert Alaniz said.
He said district officials were concerned that Oliver’s show would not fairly reflect steps LAUSD has taken to improve its menus, such as banning junk food and sodas. “Our guidelines are certainly way above the USDA guidelines,” he said, adding the district remained opening to working with the chef.
Oliver, who has championed the cause of promoting healthier eating in schools in Britain and now America, recently moved to Los Angeles and is filming the second season of ABC’s “Food Revolution.” He has been trying for months to gain entry into the country’s second-largest school system, but he has received a cold reception from district officials.
Oliver was not available for comment. But a spokeswoman for the show said the production would continue outside the school, regardless of the in-school ban.
In a speech at the UCLA School of Public Health on Wednesday night, Oliver said he had been inspired by his experiences at West Adams Preparatory and shared his frustration with district officials.
“Yesterday my filming permit was terminated because I can’t promise that the LAUSD doesn’t look good,” he said. “They fail to see me as a positive, and they fail to see the TV as an incredible way to spread the word, to inspire people, to inform parents, to see other teachers doing pioneering things.’
Although many local schools generate extra cash by leasing out their facilities for filming, some reality productions have irked school officials. Last year, officials at Hollenbeck Middle School complained about having to spend more than $100,000 to fix a substandard paint job left behind by the TV show “School Pride.”
