Oh the hubris of the man!
Having hacked off the good people of Huntington, West Virginia, Oliver has now taken his food revolution to La La Land (Jamie's Food Revolution Hits Hollywood, 10pm, C4, 17 May) - la la la ironically being the very sound I was making as I shoved my fingers in my ears, so cringe-worthy was the whole thing.
Now, don't get me wrong. I can see that if you scratch California's healthy eating veneer, you reach an underbelly fat to bursting on junk food. And kids really shouldn't be eating plastic-wrapped "aeroplane" food, as Oliver put it, at school.
But if this old campaigning dog wants to reform America's diet, he really is going to have to learn some new tricks. His shtick is so practised that he comes across more snake oil salesman than food crusader.
"I'm a parent, I have four kids, I want you all just to think for a second about the day your first child was born," he preaches to a group of parents, before pulling off that old politician's trick of grabbing the nearest child. "That beautiful little thing. This is the future of America, yeah?"
The crowd must have wondered whether they'd accidentally walked into a Billy Graham gig. And then came the usual repertoire of stunts. First he wheeled in some poor cow (not a traumatised mum an actual cow), which he marked with chalk to show the price of each cut.
Why? Who knows? But did he really need to hold up hunks of one of its dead compatriots to the animal's side? Or shove carcase dregs into a washing machine to show people how it's rendered fit for human consumption with a good slosh of ammonia (don't worry, only in the US). Or fill a school bus with 57 tons of "sugar" to illustrate how much is added to flavoured milk (a trick he's tried before with a trailer and some fat I seem to recall)?
It was all so predictable. I'm not surprised the authorities banned him from their schools. Not that they covered themselves in glory when he tried to get the ban overturned (he was told to see a bloke at the back of the room, who promptly scarpered).
But boasting to the milk board that "I come from a country where kids drink milk and don't have to consume the equivalent of a candy bar when they do so" is really not very edifying or smart.
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Having hacked off the good people of Huntington, West Virginia, Oliver has now taken his food revolution to La La Land (Jamie's Food Revolution Hits Hollywood, 10pm, C4, 17 May) - la la la ironically being the very sound I was making as I shoved my fingers in my ears, so cringe-worthy was the whole thing.
Now, don't get me wrong. I can see that if you scratch California's healthy eating veneer, you reach an underbelly fat to bursting on junk food. And kids really shouldn't be eating plastic-wrapped "aeroplane" food, as Oliver put it, at school.
But if this old campaigning dog wants to reform America's diet, he really is going to have to learn some new tricks. His shtick is so practised that he comes across more snake oil salesman than food crusader.
"I'm a parent, I have four kids, I want you all just to think for a second about the day your first child was born," he preaches to a group of parents, before pulling off that old politician's trick of grabbing the nearest child. "That beautiful little thing. This is the future of America, yeah?"
The crowd must have wondered whether they'd accidentally walked into a Billy Graham gig. And then came the usual repertoire of stunts. First he wheeled in some poor cow (not a traumatised mum an actual cow), which he marked with chalk to show the price of each cut.
Why? Who knows? But did he really need to hold up hunks of one of its dead compatriots to the animal's side? Or shove carcase dregs into a washing machine to show people how it's rendered fit for human consumption with a good slosh of ammonia (don't worry, only in the US). Or fill a school bus with 57 tons of "sugar" to illustrate how much is added to flavoured milk (a trick he's tried before with a trailer and some fat I seem to recall)?
It was all so predictable. I'm not surprised the authorities banned him from their schools. Not that they covered themselves in glory when he tried to get the ban overturned (he was told to see a bloke at the back of the room, who promptly scarpered).
But boasting to the milk board that "I come from a country where kids drink milk and don't have to consume the equivalent of a candy bar when they do so" is really not very edifying or smart.
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