Balance of Food

Jack in the Box stands up and removes toys from kids' meals

Perhaps being outside the Big 3 of fast food restaurants means you can move faster to reform how fast food is done. At least, that is where some of the credit goes for Jack in the Box's decision to stop carrying toys in its kids' meals.

Political pressure from local bans in California (Jack's home state) certainly plays its part. The restaurant chain cites a number of changes separate from outside influence. We'll put that down as a percentage of the reason.

Jack in the Box implemented this decision along with a move to offer sliced apples and caramel dipping sauce as an alternative to French fries in those kids' meals. While having a choice is laudable, caramel dipping sauce doesn't sound much better than French fries. In fact, Chick-fil-A offers cole slaw and potato salad as alternatives to French fries in its adult meals.

The restaurant chain is also offering grilled cheese sandwiches and grilled chicken strips as other children's options.

Other than the antenna balls, of which I have several, I wasn't too aware of what Jack in the Box was putting in kids' meals. The issue with McDonald's and Burger King stems from the very well-known toys that would be more likely to be wanted by children.

So when one of the Big 3 says it can't be done, just point to the 5th largest fast food franchise in the United States: Jack in the Box.

Jamie Oliver crosses new lines to shill for Green Giant

There must be a rush from food advertisers this past week fleeing from "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution," no doubt from the words exchanged at the beginning of the previous episode.

We saw only food-related ad, a repeat of the Splenda ad. The theme, if you don't remember, was consuming 9 teaspoons of Splenda could save you 100 calories a day and 10 pounds a year. of course, 9 teaspoons of sugar saves you more than 100 calories.

On the slim chance that you might think adding an artificial sweetener will make that much of a difference, we point out their own disclaimer: "Physical activity, a healthy diet and calorie reduction are important parts of any weight loss program." Yes, you have to do more than sub out 9 teaspoons a sugar.

So we devote the rest of the column to the huge, dare we say, giant presence within the show. The Green Giant was huge in the cooking contest.

Jamie Oliver told us that the company was responsible for funding the cooking contest, which seemed rather pointless in the first place.

This is no longer subtle product placements. This is Jamie Oliver shilling for Green Giant.

There were three judges for the cooking contest, two famous chefs (Jonathan Waxman and Michael Simon) and Andy Dahlen from Green Giant. So what is Dahlen's expertise in this battle? Former chef? Food expert? Uh, no, Dahlen is Green Giant's marketing director. Wow!

Of course, the one area of expertise Dahlen has over two prominent chefs is exposure to Green Giant products, which is fortunate for him because as Jamie puts it, "You need to use at least one Green Giant dish in your meal."

We have learned that when there is an audio change in the program, necessary words have been added it at the last minute. "There's great prizes" has a lower pitch and a "let's go into the studio at the last minute to record this." Maybe Jamie forced Green Giant to actually pay out more for its advertising buck. [In Season 1, Jamie added a disclaimer that chicken nuggets in the U.S. weren't prepared in the way he showed the kids.]

While the kids are cooking in the first round, Jamie adds another pitch for the sponsor. "One Green Giant product, at least."

When the professional chefs ask Dahlen to weigh in, he does have a sense of presentation — because he has eyes. Again, ⅓ of the judges have no significant experience in judging this food.

And Green Giant can't be thrilled to see the dishes had very little impact from their food. In fact, some of the dishes must have pureed the frozen veggies since they were not visible. Still, you have to imagine that the company still came out on top since they got extensive exposure on national TV and had the leader of the Food Revolution talk about their food as if it mattered.

Jamie wasn't done yet. He was back shilling for the Green Giant products before the second and final round. "This kind of stuff, you know, whether it's the spinach and the broccoli -- this is a perfect way to have fresh veg all the time in your freezer, okay." While Jamie is speaking, he is holding up the bags for the camera."

In the segment, Jamie points out that they have 15 minutes to prep the students on ingredients they've never seen. Yet in that time, Jamie has to shoot a commercial as well. At least the other mentors aren't stuck shilling for frozen vegetables.

Green Giant also had signs along the fence, capturing multiple times by the cameras.

In the second round, you see the kids working fresh spinach. So either they worked with the fresh stuff, ignored the fresh stuff to use the Green Giant, or a bit of both. Odd anyway you look at it.

We argued yesterday that there were a number of legitimate reasons why Jamie's school won the competition. But when a major sponsor that got really special treatment has ⅓ of the vote in a contest that is won by the kids from the host's school, this looks bad.

We aren't saying there was a quid pro quo. But when you have a clearly unqualified person in a judging panel has a stake in who wins, there is an integrity loss that goes beyond an in-show ad.

Unless Jamie Oliver and his many executive producers begged Green Giant to have a judge on its panel, then Green Giant crossed yet more unethical lines. While there are many who says bad publicity is better than no publicity, Jamie Oliver, Ryan Seacrest Productions, ABC, and Green Giant should rethink this approach should there be a Food Revolution Season 3.

Jamie Oliver Episode 6: Goodbye to LA with unneeded cooking contest

"You can get a burger for 410 calories instead of 800 and it can taste good and it can be affordable."

-- Deno answering Jamie Oliver's question on advice for fast food purveyors in America.

If you missed the first half-hour of the final epsiode of Season 2, this sentence was the only real advice you missed. The show was "interrupted" for a significant stretch by a cooking contest where students from 7 Los Angeles high schools, including West Adams, competed to win a trip to New York and the Culinary Institute of America.

This contest was designed to impress the new superintendent of LA schools, John Deasy. Though we never saw a correlation that Deasy even knew there was a contest. While it might have made for good TV, this had very little to do with the Food Revolution.

The best highlight of the first half-hour was Jamie Oliver inviting 7 top LA chefs with the ruse of cooking lunch for them. Of course, Jamie has something up his sleeve and serves them school lunch food. These chefs aren't used to "regular" food much less what the kids in the LAUSD are getting.

Strawberry milk: "It smells crazy, candy synthetic. The milk doesn't even taste like milk. It's just like sugar artificial strawberry right at the front." That same chef wouldn't feed the burger to his dog.

Hamburger "It's so flat in flavor. You taste the wheat, the bun more than you taste the beef."

Chicken nuggets: "I can't eat that, This is gross."

Gee, the audience at home wants to help, much less these chefs. Then again, we can't smell the food.

This would have been good like three weeks ago to have the chefs work with the students over a longer period of time.

West Adams High School was one of the 7 schools in the contest, and the school had a leg up just because the students had worked with Jamie for some time. But you feel like all along that the West Adams was going to win the whole thing.

After the first round, Jamie announces the three finalists "in no particular order." Amazingly, West Adams is read last. The smell from this scenario got worse when the commercial element was added (details coming tomorrow at BalanceofFood.com).

Flavored milk was the theme of the second half of the episode. Parents were protesting because a meeting was canceled at the last minute to deal with the flavored milk issue. If you didn't know in real life that the LAUSD is getting rid of flavored milk at the end of this week, you might have been in suspense.

For those of us who knew what was going to happen, seeing behind the scenes was still fun. Deasy was more in step with what Jamie was looking for, which makes you wonder why Jamie couldn't have postponed the LA experience to get more classroom time into the episodes.

There was video footage of the appearance with Jamie Oliver and Deasy on Jimmy Kimmel Live, set in Los Angeles on the very network that the Food Revolution runs on. What a tie-in!

Jamie gets to go back to West Adams and see the new organic garden and finally get into a school kitchen. He is greeted by a lunch lady with a hug, something that would have be seen as radical in the Huntington experience. The students get to try new quesadillas with spinach tortillas.

We do think Jamie Oliver and the show got seriously distracted in Season 2. This shouldn't have been about whining or having a nice place for Jamie to have his family. But there was moments of brilliance, the great potential for a show to make a difference.

"It's a war, it's definitely a war against obesity." -- Jamie tells us toward the end. Too much of Season 2 was a war against the LAUSD and other authority figures. We need more of that war spirit against obesity and flavored milk and deceptive food marketing and secret ingredients in our food and an overall corporate-speak that determines what regular people consume in their daily lives.

Don't let the bashing get you down. We would welcome a Season 3 of "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution." But once again, we want more help and a whole lot less hype, especially from a certain frozen vegetable company (more on that tomorrow right here at BalanceofFood.com).

Temptation of the Week: $1 sandwich, with a long wait for free

How little would a sandwich has to cost for you to wait in line? On your lunch hour? At a place you normally wouldn't eat?

There was the line a while back outside Jimmy John's for $1 sandwiches. Not sure why they were $1, but talked to people in the line and they seemed happy about the idea of spending $1 for a sandwich, though they wish that fewer of their fellow human beings weren't as interested.

There are scenarios where this would tempt me, but I have had two experiences with Jimmy John's, neither of which was appetizing. When you don't want to finish a free sandwich because it isn't worth eating — twice — something is off.

But substitute certain sandwich chains and I would wait in line for a $1 sandwich, even know I know it may not be as good as a regular sandwich. When workers are overworked, quality can suffer. The traditional McD's 49¢ hamburgers leap to mind.

Word floated around the office that there was a 50¢ breakfast sandwich special at a chain establishment. Turns out the bacon was 50¢, not the sandwich. But the office workers were ready to pounce on the offer.

If you make a lot of money, the cost savings between a $4-$5 sandwich and a $1 sandwich may not be enough to justify the wait. But sadly, cheap food is cheap and we don't make enough to ignore such a deal.

Then again, if we had the time to make the sandwich, we could buy really good bread, lettuce that is dark green, nice tomato slices with a decent meat and spend less than $1. If we had the time.

Fried Kool-Aid not worth Temptation of the Week

You would think that fried Kool-Aid would belong in the Temptation of the Week column (now on Fridays at BalanceofFood.com). After all, we wrote about deep-fried butter last September. So why wouldn't fried Kool-Aid fall in that category?

Maybe you were that kid who would wet a finger and stick it inside the Kool-Aid powder to see what it tasted like without the annoying water getting in the way. Or maybe you tried it with the unsweetened powder, which left you with a bitter taste in your mouth.

But Kool-Aid powder is a borderline definition of, well, food. Fine to have as a novelty, but the lure of deep-fried butter, if there is a lure, is that hot butter tastes good, better than cold butter.

Yes, hot Kool-Aid powder could be yummy, but Kool-Aid powder is made to go with cold, not hot. Not a physicist, but fried Kool-Aid could be breaking the laws of physics.

Now, if we are going to fry up a powder, I suggest the "cheese" powder of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese (Kraft Dinner for my Canadian readers). This is a powder that is supposed to be hot, as in cooked mac and cheese. Then again, I was the kid who stuck a finger into the gray packet and had some pure cheese powder.

if Fried Kraft Macaroni & Cheese powder comes out, we will be there for Temptation of the Week.

Instead of 'no,' GOP needs to say 'yes' to solving food problems

We have a two-party system in the United States, and while the Democratic Party hasn't been the bravest on the fight for a better food approach, they have been the only positive voices in Congress.

The ideal would be to have two parties that agree that the food policy in this country needs fixing, even if they sharply disagree on the answer. Two recent news items makes us wonder when/if this will actually happen:

-- The GOP is in control of the House of Representatives, meaning that more of their members are in committees than the Democrats. The House Appropriations Committee recently put in language to take away the hard-fought increases in the federally subsidized school meals program. Remember, the 6¢ increase was the first non-inflationary raise in 36 years. 

To its credit, the USDA says it can't undo what the previous Congress had done but allowing the smattering of pennies increase in the funding for school lunches.

-- The House voted to reduce food aid while keeping farm subsidies, most of which goes to Big Ag. The legislation was also designed to repeal efforts by the FDA to enforce food safety law passed by the previous Congress by defunding the ability to enforce the law.

---

"Do you believe that healthy eating habits can be legislated?"

"I absolutely believe in legislation. Politicians rarely do it because it might upset their voters and they don't like nanny states. But in my personal opinion, kids need nannying."

This exchange happened early in last week's Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. The answer didn't quite fit the question (no one is legislating eating habits), but this does point out the need for government.

Republicans don't see it this way, of course. But other than asking nicely to large food companies, and not really even asking, they have no ideas on how to improve our food supply. Regulation = bad, Monsanto and Big Ag = good — this doesn't make a sound food policy.

We're talking about food safety, a few extra pennies literally for a school lunch, aid for those who are financially suffering with children in the United States: these don't seem unreasonable, but they are to Republicans.

This doesn't have to be a GOP bashing. We would love to hear from those on the right for ideas, suggestions, creativity galore on how we can improve the food supply that doesn't offend their sensibilities. But they have to be solutions we can do, and do now.

Jamie Oliver says fast food is advertised on his show, but we have no proof

"All I do is talk. I don't have anything to do with the ads. I wish I did, and if I did, I wouldn't let them advertise fast food while the show's going out. But they can't even manage that."

We got an unexpected insight into the ad process on "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" during the Q&A in Pasadena. A woman wanted Jamie to find a way to run an ad during the show saying what great things lunch ladies do.

Did she not watch the Huntington episodes? Jamie gave lots of free publicity to the idea of lunch ladies are great, but what they are forced to do isn't ideal.

The assumption is also that Jamie has no responsibility for in-show ads. Then again, Oliver is an executive producer with his name in the title. One of these days we will get a reality show where the star has some say in the ad standards. But not now.

And contrary to what Jamie said, the fast food companies have stayed away from advertising. The show has had blurred out McD's bags and Jamie talked about fast food in his adventures with Deno. Diet food has dominated, but fast food is invisible, at least during the breaks.

Otherwise, this was a weak week for ad during Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, almost as if someone whispered that this wasn't the best week to advertise.

The Innova pet food ad was back, and ran twice during the show. Boy, that food looks good even if I'm not in the demographic for the food.

ABC ran another promo for Extreme Makeover Weight Loss Edition. We could combine the concept of that reality show with Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. That birth would produce a similar show to Jillian Michaels yelling-fest (now that was a show that advertised fast food) from last summer, though a quieter show with fewer in-show ads for Subway would be an improvement.

Kim Cattrall was also back with another "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" commercial. We did rank it the worst of the best recently, but this ad's tag line struck an odd chord.

"fresh butter taste with 70% less saturated fat than butter"

And the label says "tastes as good as fresh butter according to 4 out of 5 butter users." The product has traditionally been marketed for its health, not its taste. Though I have used the product in the past, but not recently, I couldn't tell you anything about its taste.

However, if 80% of sampled butter users can't tell the difference, they either don't know what butter tastes like or they are eating crappy butter.

Unless the product's formula has changed dramatically, you don't go from no marketing on taste to super awesome can't tell the difference taste. People will eat the product to save fat and calories, but you have to be realistic.

Diet products come at a price. Different ingredients are used to make something "light" or "diet." Expecting that to be the same as the original is assuming your audience isn't very bright.

The in-house ads was free of the Green Giant this week. Bing appeared as always (yawn) and two new entries made the scene: The Fruit Guys and Better Homes and Gardens.

The Fruit Guys in-show ad would have been a bigger splash if their house wasn't full of fruit. Perhaps Jamie was surprised but the Fruit Guys shouldn't be.

Let's be honest: most of us didn't know that Better Homes and Gardens was anything more than a magazine. The folks helped plant a garden at West Adams High School in LA, with Jamie waving bye to them as he stood just off school property, as if he was saying goodbye to his oldest child on her first day of kindergarten.

While the Fruit Guys and Better Homes and Gardens weren't obnoxious in their in-show approaches, they do distract from the narrative.

You can imagine that without those words in the beginning that next week's episode (the final one) will have more obnoxious food ads, but still no fast food companies.

Jamie Oliver Episode 5: Where was the missing Barrett boy?

Father's Day weekend was a great time to see more of the Barrett family, a single father with two young boys. And "Uncle Jamie" decided to stop by to see how they were doing.

But the biggest story was that there were 3 people in the last visit and only 2 in this week's visit.

Jamie treated his visit as a surprise to the family. But when you have TV cameras, nobody is truly surprised. Then again, the Barretts had the last laugh on Jamie.

Earlier, we saw Jamie dump a year's worth of fast food in their house when they weren't looking. The Barretts stuffed their house full of fruits and vegetables to Jamie, who seemed surprised that his serve was volleyed back at him.

Jamie brought his own gift: a box from The Fruit Guys. They were cooking good food, they are growing their own vegetables. Denny (the father) lost 16 pounds, and Brandon says he feels better.

So how does Brady feel? In last week's episode, there were two kids, 14 and 10. This week, there was only the 14-year-old.

There are a few possible reasons why Brady wasn't on camera:
-- went on a non-stop fast food binge
-- started getting shy about being on camera
-- his mother and/or other relatives pulled him off the air

Whatever the reason, there was a deliberate attempt not to have him on, but we may never know the whole story.

But don't feel bad if you didn't notice the missing boy, neither did the Los Angeles Times.

The Barrett trip was necessary for Jamie and the audience since the first part of the show is more whining from Jamie about not getting into the district, even though he had been at West Adams High School and had been making a difference.

"The reason I came to LA was because there were 11 million people here."

Jamie believes this, but the rest of us don't believe this anymore. Jamie brought his family to live in LA: do you think Jamie would have gone to rural Mississippi or Oklahoma City or Benton Harbor, MI? 

In the first 15 minutes, Jamie meets Pavel, who runs a lunch program in a district, gets excited that he might work with Pavel, then gets crushed when he can't work with Pavel. Jamie later says "it's been the worst month professionally of my whole career." Maybe this is true, but he picked a bad situation and has done great things, yet he's miserable.

One great thing was deciding to set up Jamie's Kitchen across from West Adams High, deciding to move it from Westwood to West Adams. My LA geography may be off, but Westwood might not have been the best place to help those who really need help. And then when he decides to go to West Adams, he must close the location in Westwood. If it was that great to begin with, then why should it close?

We see footage of the American Heart Association people (the AHA sponsors Jamie's Kitchen) watching footage of Jamie in the classroom. We see Jamie getting an award (with a cameo from another famous Jamie — Jamie Lee Curtis) where he talked about those boys crying about their relatives' health.

As Jamie has been whining about not being in the classroom, of course, he still is in the classroom. Jamie goes to hear students' "letters to Jamie" and then runs an assembly where samples of freshly cooked food are passed out to students.

One advantage to being in California is the warm weather where a year-round garden can exist on school property. Jamie takes principal Mike and Chaitali from West Adams to Santa Barbara to Carpinteria High School where that school has reformed its school lunch program, including an organic garden.

You wouldn't be able to do this in a lot of the climates across the country, but this was must-see TV.

Jamie tells us that this school was similar to West Adams three years ago. And the school got rid of flavored milk three years ago. This school has a 70% free/reduced rate, where the majority of the school gets subsidized lunches.

These lunch people look happy and talk about being happy at lunch time. The salad bar looked tremendous. One student off-camera was asked to rank the school lunch on a 1-10 scale, and gave it a 10.

And to help them, Jamie rounded up some friends (more on that tomorrow) and started an outdoor garden at West Adams.

There is only 6 episodes in the season, about 276 minutes of programming. This Santa Barbara school deserved more than the 5 minutes that it got. Jamie spent more time moping in this episode than he did showing us this school. Negative sells for reality TV, but real people need positive.  

The theme of the show was "Feed Them Healthy Food with 77 Cents" but there was never a reference to the cost of school lunches. That would be worth 276 minutes of prime time TV to explore why we spend so little on our country's future.

Temptation of the Week: Can Chick-fil-A co-exist with gay?

This week's temptation isn't about a chicken sandwich, or a grand opening of a chain restaurant you never thought you would see in the city where you live, though they star heavily in the program.

The temptation centers on where the money goes that you spend on food. One of the underscored advantages to eating local is that local farmers get the money to then spend on local businesses. Not that free trade isn't good, but should Chile get my money for strawberries in January?

But this temptation doesn't involve international intrigue, but politics, religion and a chicken sandwich.

As we profiled earlier, Chick-fil-A doesn't go well with gay, or at least that is the impression among a significant portion of people who care about the subject. We believe in equality for all, and we believe in a chicken sandwich.

My experience with Chick-fil-A before yesterday has been childhood trips in the South, a business trip to Atlanta in 1995, and a sandwich last fall on campus at George Washington University on the way to the Pentagon.

Going on Grand Opening day is great and awful all on the same day. Guaranteed to be treated well but the food may not be up to snuff. So while you can't judge based on the initial impression, here we go.

I literally got my food before my change: a bad sign but a little understandable given the huge crowd there for dinner. My selection was the classic chicken sandwich with pickle slices, waffle fries, and cole slaw.

The chicken sandwich is so simplistic; they tell us it's hand-breaded. There are no fancy sauces on the sandwich and if you think it's odd to have pickle slices on the bottom, you're right but it works.

The waffle fries were not good, something you get when everyone is in a rush. But you discover that with the cole slaw, you might not need the fries. And if you go the meal route with a drink, you can sub cole slaw and other similar eating options for fries. I am a cole slaw snob, seriously. I like very few cole slaws and this was one of the best I ever had. Not 1970s KFC, but closer than you ever would have thought you would see outside the Colonel.

There is a Southern flair with sweet and unsweetened teas as side-by-side options. And there are plenty of sauces on the side, including Polynesian, buttermilk ranch, buffalo, BBQ sauce, and a Chick-fil-A sauce that appears to be BBQ sauce combined with mustard. The BBQ/mustard thing can work, but not this. All the sauces have high-fructose corn syrup except for the buffalo option.

There is side-by-side seating so you can meet your neighbors. There were two young women from Indianapolis who knew the chain down there. The guy next to me was there with his wife: this was his 3rd meal there that day and his wife's 1st. Another couple had never been there in their lives, and he ordered a salad. She got the spicy chicken sandwich.

They serve breakfast, and the chicken biscuit looks worth doing, intriguing because fast food breakfasts are something I rarely if ever do. Breakfast is only served during breakfast, but lunch is available in the morning, something I would have killed for 10 years ago.

The chain, for religious reasons, is not open Sunday, and that won't change in a "heathen" city such as Chicago.

Protests only work if the product you are boycotting have value, a temptation if you will. The food is tempting enough, depending on your taste. If you are a vegetarian, and can live without the cole slaw, there isn't a whole lot to tempt you.

It's a heck of a lot better than Domino's Pizza, the long-time target of protests from the left. And you still have to decide whether you think a protest is worthwhile based on its corporate stand with gay people.

pictures taken by me

Education reform: LA schools say no to flavored milk

District of Columbia, Boulder Valley, CO, and Berkeley, CA are only some of the nationwide school districts to ban flavored milk in their schools. Well. add Los Angeles to the list.

And yes, Jamie Oliver gets a lot of the credit. But LA wouldn't have done this just because of Jamie.

The ban kicks in July 1.

For those school districts that still justify the policy, at least reduce the sugars in the chocolate milk and eliminate high-fructose corn syrup.

If you find that kids aren't paying enough attention in class, and you are dealing with added sugars in their diet, there could be a correlation. And even if there isn't, this is an experiment worth trying.

And if you still struggle with this, don't think of this in terms of food. Think of it as education reform.

Is there more that can be done to reduce the sugars at lunchtime. Sure. But this battle needs to be won first so that the naysayers can't come back and say, "Hey, they aren't drinking the milk."

And give these kids time to adjust. Making the change in summer is great since the transition will be under the radar, giving their bodies much needed time to adjust back to white milk. And most of them will eventually pick the white milk. Because deep down, they want to be at their best to learn.