Jamie Oliver the case against

16 Mar 2007

Jamie Oliver the case against

Current mood:pessimistic

If you've been living in a cave in Afghanistan spending your time plotting ways in which to destroy infidels, then Jamie Olivers inexplicable rise to fame may have escaped you. Otherwise you'll know what I'm on about. Somehow his ego has become so bloated he feels the need to wade into areas his minuscule IQ has little hope of comprehending with staggering confidence.  Namely his futile attempt to end obesity by changing school dinners. If you like me went to a state comprehensive then the food on offer in the tuckshop and canteen where about the only things that made the experience bearable. Dipping into caramel slices, jam and cream donuts, pizza slices etc. at break times will stay in my mind as my happiest memories of school. But that pleasure is now under serious threat because of Jamie Olivers fevered ego. In his programmes he is seen berating canteen staff, losing his temper, swearing etc. as he fails to understand why dinner ladies on minimum wage aren't all Haute cuisine chefs. He himself acknowledges that even with all his culinary skills the kids would rather eat the food traditionaly served by the staff than his stuff. He sometimes even gets upset with the kids and uses scare tactics to wean them off chicken nuggets by blending a chicken in front of them and then saying that the resulting goo is what goes into a chicken nugget. Of course that's going to look unappetising but his alternative is to cook real chickens which is time consuming and leaves the kids having to remove the bones, fat and skin off their chickens themselves, something that is bound to create a mess which gets thrown around the canteen
The problem here is also a class problem, I know for a fact that the prices in Jamie's restaurant are exorbitant, I heard cheese on toast was £8. Its all do with an unnecessary class snobbery which dictates that we should all have cultivated palates which naturally would want to be eating (or more likely seen to be eating) the stuff he serves in his restaurant, as if after a few beers most peoples palate couldn't be reduced to craving a fat donner kebab or mighty meaty pizza. The obesity epidemic is not caused by school canteens scrimping on lentils and cous cous its caused by unnatural food additives and other chemical put into nearly all processed food. A plate of chips, egg and bacon at school though causing Jamie Oliver to go apoplectic is in fact very healthy as it contains no artificial additives.
In school I was taught there where 4 basic tastes Salt, sweet, Sour and Bitter but there are infact 5
MSG stimulates specific receptors located in taste buds such as the amino acid receptor or other glutamate receptors like the metabotropic receptors which induce the taste known as umami,
MSG, Monosodium glutamate, sodium glutamate or flavour enhancer 621 as its called is found in most canned soups, most beef and chicken stocks, most flavoured potato crisps and other snack foods, many frozen dinners, instant meals etc.
In Scientific studies MSG has been shown to cause obesity in lab rats.
Because MSG is absorbed very quickly it could spike blood plasma levels of glutamate. Glutamic acid is in a class of chemicals known as excitotoxins, high levels of which have been shown in animal studies to cause damage to areas of the brain unprotected by the blood-brain barrier and that a variety of chronic diseases can arise out of this neurotoxicity. The debate among scientists on the significance of these findings has been raging since the early 1970s, when Dr. John Olney found that high levels of glutamic acid caused damage to the brains of infant mice.
Basically its very bad stuff for your brain, especially if your a mouse.  And in any case we should err on the side of caution. But the 1991 report by the European Community's Scientific Committee for Foods reaffirmed MSG's safety and classified its "acceptable daily intake" as "not specified", the most favourable designation for a food ingredient. In addition, the EC Committee said, "Infants, including prematures, have been shown to metabolize glutamate as efficiently as adults and therefore do not display any special susceptibility to elevated oral intakes of glutamate."
Which can be read as Corporate lobbying has lead the E.U. into taking no action to reduce our intake of it.  Is it any suprise we have record levels of Obesity, dyslexia and other problems like attention deficit disorder when kids food is pact with chemicals designed to make you crave it.  If Jamie Oliver wanted to do something to stop obesity he could highlight the dangers of eating foods stuffed with nasty chemicals and promote sensible home cooking to be taught in schools rather than take his middle class snobbery of thinking I know what's best and you into our schools.  I for might part emailled My local MP Hazel Blears on the subject I and I believe to date she's done fuck all about it.
Postscript, since writting this I have received a letter from Hazel Blears in which she tries to fob us off by saying that chemical in foods are regulated at an E.U. level.  The truth is she probably couldn't do anything about it even if she wanted to because her government has ceded all powers of food regulation to the E.U.
Feel free to leave comments