TV review: Jamie Oliver aims to make school lunches more healthful

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

In the film “We Are Marshall,” the town of Huntington, W.Va., reels, then regroups after most of Marshall University’s football team is killed in a plane crash. Forty years later, Huntington is at the center of yet another potential turn-around tale. Only this time, rather than a phoenix emerging from the ashes, the image is more of a grilled chicken breast rising from a landfill of deep fryers.

In ‘Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,’ the boyish and preternaturally media-friendly British food guru known for a while as ‘The Naked Chef’ because of his penchant for simple food, comes to Huntington in the hopes of transforming the unhealthiest town -- i.e. the fattest town -- in America. After overhauling the menus for the British school system, and with half a dozen TV shows to his credit, Oliver seems just the man for the job.

After a brief wrangle with a hostile local radio talk show host, he attempts to slay the dragon of the local school lunch. It’s a brilliant move, narratively speaking. Not only do we meet all the fabulous ‘lunch ladies,’ including one Alice Gue, who I am fairly certain ran my elementary school cafeteria, but we also discover there isn’t a person alive who won’t joyfully bash school cafeteria food. Read more here:

Jamie Oliver trys to transform the way kids look at food on ABC’s ‘Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.’ (Holly Farrell)