Some towns are known for their beaches, some for their quaint town squares, some for cultural activities.
Huntington, W. Va., is known for its fatties. Yes, Huntington is, according to the US government, the fattest city in America with the highest rate of diabetes. In fact, one half of all its residents (including the kids) are not just fat but obese. Clearly, this is a town in bad need of a diet.
Enter Jamie Oliver, blue-collar English bloke, celebrity chef, the man responsible for revamping the unhealthy school food system in England and now star of a new reality show, “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,” which debuts Sunday night.
Oliver has been challenged to revamp the school menus in Huntington — by changing its insanely unhealthy, fat-loaded, sodium-packed, frozen breakfast and lunch menus with fresh-cooked, fresh-food meals. He starts by working in the cafeteria of the local elementary school.
Why this school serves breakfast, I don’t know. Why they serve pizza for breakfast I now do know — it helps fulfill the two-bread government requirement.
Now, you’d think a town whose fat children are slated to live shorter lives than their parents (the first generation in history) would welcome such a revolution. You’d think.
But they don’t — and if they did, well, there would be no show would there? Reality shows, after all, thrive on conflict — even if it’s fake, disgusting, degrading conflict (“Jersey Shore,” “Real Housewives” of everywhere).
Here, the conflicts are real — with everyone from the cafeteria “lunch ladies” to the local radio talk show guy to the school administrators trying their darndest to give Jamie and his healthy food a good, swift kick in his arse. They want change the way Donald Trump wants to change his hairstyle — not at all.
And they aren’t nice about it. In fact, they are mean, and downright scary — especially cafeteria lady Alice Gue, who thinks all the dried processed food, like her favorite “potato pearls” which expand like those flat sponges when water is added, is real nutritious food.
She mocks Oliver, scorns him and scares him. But not enough to stop him.
Talk radio guy Rod Willis is so horrible to him that Oliver says, “I thought there were only miserable bastards like that in England.” And he calls Willis an old “git” that he’s going to drag down.
Oliver is a great TV personality — and if he accomplishes what he’s set out to do — also a great revolutionary in the war against fat.