No podcast this week, so that we can bring you an in-depth take on the lead-in to Season 2 of "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution."
Jamie Oliver made a couple of late-night appearances leading up to the premiere next week of the Los Angeles version.
Oliver's stint on David Letterman on CBS revolved mostly around cooking. Oliver's ADD lends itself to multitasking; he almost seems more lucid when he's cooking than when his hands aren't as busy. Cooking-wise, Oliver made pasta puttanesca with mussels.
What Oliver said would make you lose your appetite for pasta puttanesca.
In the Los Angeles version, Oliver describing the ice cream as containing "beaver anal gland." The ice cream contained castoreum. To quote from Wikipedia:
"In the United States, Castoreum has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a food additive, often referenced simply as a "natural flavoring" in the product's list of ingredients. It is commonly used in both food and beverages, especially as vanilla flavoring."
That may be "natural flavoring" for the beaver, not so much for humans.
Oliver told Letterman the LA school food reminded him of "airplane food, cause it's central kitchen, it's all wrapped in plastic and it all just gets reheated in sites."
Can we have some more pasta puttanesca?
From Oliver's appearances on Letterman and Stewart, the new season won't so much be in the schools, but around the schools. Oliver was banned from the LA schools before the plane even landed. Oliver showed a clip on "The Daily Show" of kids bringing in school lunch and breakfast food to Jamie's kitchen. Some of those items would be funny if it weren't happening to real kids on a daily basis.
Stewart wondered if the Los Angeles system might be too large — as opposed to Huntington, WV — to be agile enough to change. Oliver responded by noting that a private company doesn't want to air its dirty laundry, but schools are funded by taxpayers: "when it's public money and public service, and your taxes pay for it, then maybe transparency is quite a good thing in a democracy."
Stewart began and ended the interview by saying, "Good luck with that."
This looks like a different kind of revolution, one that needs TV more than the first season did.
Oliver has two fights on his hands in this version, from what we can tell. The bureaucracy of the school lunch system, which is considerable, drives Oliver nuts. But his best moments are/will come when he is talking about the food — the bad and the good.
More talk about beaver anal gland, while disgusting, will make an impact on the ABC viewing audience. A lot of information about the quality of our food goes by us like a spring breeze. Beaver anal gland changes all of that and makes the discussion much more memorable.
Shame on America's school system
Posted by: Delmafay | May 04, 2011 at 06:53 AM