Well, it’d be something. And boozy.
In a new interesting partnership, three chefs have decided to take on the California school lunch system to promote food education for children. Jamie Oliver (the Naked Chef who’s tackled the same topic in the U.K.), Alice Waters (Queen of Everything), and Ann Cooper teamed up this week to drop by schools for a lesson in urban farming and preach on #foodtruths and the evils of fast food.
“Children today live in a Fast Food world, where their understanding… of food is often manipulated by big food companies,” said Oliver in a press release. “As a result, many kids believe that food is a packaged product that comes off a shelf or out of a drive-thru window.”
“I just know that when children grow food themselves and they cook it, that they always eat it,” said Waters to the Sacramento Bee while at Pacific Elementary School. “And I’m talking about kale and collard greens and things we assume children don’t love. On the contrary, they do.”
It’s not entirely clear what the trio have planned to continue the work of children’s food education, but Eater notes that the chefs (and their food foundations) are “working on a number of awareness initiatives.”
This also means we get weird but informative insight into #foodtruths and the three chefs’ perspectives on Reddit. For example, how they all really feel about Michelle Obama’s school lunch initiatives:
What do you think of the controversy currently surrounding First Lady Michelle Obama’s school lunch program? Do you like it, what would you change about it?
permalinkAW: I think she didn’t ask for enough. We need a completely free school lunch, she’s asking for too little cause she doesn’t believe it can go through congress. Many people in the country believe school lunch needs to change dramatically
AC: I think she’s been blamed for many things she had nothing to do with but in our country we have little knowledge of how the government works and that changes people’s image of her. Another thing, the national school lunch program is many years old, we’ve never seen so much progress in the past 6 decades as we have seen in the past 6 years.
JO: She raised the conversation
What exactly is a “food truth?”
What is food truth?
AW: Food truth means looking for the people who have honesty and integrity who speak about food and not lying that something is healthy when it’s not. And understanding that the real truth is in the land, how the land is taken care of and how the food is grown, how quickly we can get it to children and everyone.
JO: Not lying, honesty. If it says healthy and it has 4 ingredients that are chemicals and only 2 or 3 that are good food, that’s not healthy. That’s food truth.
That didn’t exactly lead to an intellectually honest conversation, as many Redditors started bashing Oliver for not eloquently stating that all ingredients are chemicals. Moving on …
If there were one thing (product, a type of food, a particular processing or cooking technique etc) you could remove from the world to benefit people’s health, what would it be?
permalinkJO: High fructose corn syrup
AW: Soft drinks
AC: Additives, colors and dyes
JO: The pink meat slime, you know, it will be renamed and remade and put back into the market.
What does the ultimate victory of the food revolution look like for you? A tax on sugary sodas? Kids that loving kale more than french fries? No more happy meals at McDonalds?
AW: Free school lunch from organic, local people who take care of the land and nourish the kids. Let’s make that global!
AC: People, planet, prosperity. That everything that we eat and grow takes care of all the people that eat it, all the people that grow it, and the prosperity of all the people at large
JO: That a young parent no matter what age, wealth, color, knows how to cook a delicious meal for their family that nourishes them without monetary burdens
And most fun of all to imagine:
Who’s at your dream dinner party?
JO: Elvis, Ghandi, and these two, and Epic Mealtime Boys just to mix things up a little bit.
Just imagine that for a little bit please. Waters + Epic Meal Time dudes = world implosion??
At least we know tequila would be involved.
out of jamie, ann and alice who takes on the entree, main and desserts?
AW: I’ll take the grill!
JO: I like to supply alcohol and make sure I provide hydration at the right temperature and everything
AW: I always take on the salad course, I always volunteer for the salad
AC: In this case I would take the tapas style meal
JO: You don’t need dessert if you have tequila
[KCRA, Sacramento Bee, Eater, Reddit]
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