Jamie Oliver has rustled plenty of feathers during his stint as host of ABC’s “Food Revolution” television show that focuses on obesity rates tied to unhealthy diets nationwide. The chef, author and TV host jumped back into the frying pan (or is it the fryer?) earlier this month when his current series tackled the exorbitant amount of sugar consumed by students in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
As blogged earlier this month by LA Weekly writer Amy Scattergood, Oliver’s crew with the help of a poured 57 tons of white sand into a Type D, transit-style school bus that had its roof removed to demonstrate how much white sugar area students consume every week in the flavored milk they receive during school lunches.
The shoot occurred in a church parking lot not far from the STN office.
It was just last year that Oliver made headlines by taking on school administrators in Huntington, W.V., for the skyrocketing obesity rates of local children who were dining on extremely high-caloric school lunches. Since, the reality-show persona has been targeting LAUSD, which he said has yet to return his calls and has refused invitations to appear on his show or allow taping in school cafeterias. So Oliver staged the faux sugar pouring into the school bus to give viewers a visual.
Oliver said the “75-80 percent” of the milk delivered to LAUSD students is the flavored variety that contains 28 grams of sugar, two grams more than a leading soda. So Oliver is pushing for letters to be sent to school administrators that decry the amount of sugar in LAUSD milk and to allow “Food Revolution” access at LAUSD campuses.
How the issue “shapes” up remains to be seen. But it’s interesting to note in Scattergood’s blog that the tires on the school bus held good form. If they could still go ’round and ’round, however, remained another matter.
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