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  • Sadly,

  • in the next 18 minutes when I do our chat,

  • four Americans that are alive

  • will be dead

  • from the food that they eat.

  • My name is Jamie Oliver. I'm 34 years old.

  • I'm from Essex in England

  • and for the last seven years

  • I've worked fairly tirelessly

  • to save lives in my own way.

  • I'm not a doctor.

  • I'm a chef.

  • I don't have expensive equipment

  • or medicine.

  • I use information, education.

  • I profoundly believe that the power of food

  • has a primal place in our homes

  • that binds us to the best bits of life.

  • We have an awful,

  • awful reality right now.

  • America, you're at the top of your game.

  • This is one of the most unhealthy countries in the world.

  • Can I please just see a raise of hands

  • for how many of you have children in this room today?

  • Please put your hands up.

  • Aunties, uncles, you can continue ...

  • Put your hands up. Aunties and uncles as well.

  • Most of you. OK.

  • We, the adults of the last four generations,

  • have blessed our children with the destiny

  • of a shorter lifespan

  • than their own parents.

  • Your child will live a life ten years younger

  • than you

  • because of the landscape of food that we've built around them.

  • Two thirds of this room,

  • today, in America, are statistically overweight or obese.

  • You lot, you're all right, but we'll get you eventually, don't worry.

  • (Laughter)

  • Right?

  • The statistics of bad health are clear,

  • very clear.

  • We spend our lives being paranoid about death, murder, homicide,

  • you name it. It's on the front page of every paper, CNN.

  • Look at homicide at the bottom, for God's sake.

  • Right?

  • (Laughter)

  • (Applause)

  • Every single one of those in the red

  • is a diet-related disease.

  • Any doctor, any specialist will tell you that.

  • Fact. Diet-related disease is the biggest killer

  • in the United States, right now, here today.

  • This is a global problem.

  • It's a catastrophe.

  • It's sweeping the world.

  • England is right behind you, as usual.

  • (Laughter)

  • I know they were close, but not that close.

  • We need a revolution.

  • Mexico, Australia, Germany, India, China,

  • all have massive problems of obesity and bad health.

  • Think about smoking.

  • It costs way less than obesity now.

  • Obesity costs you Americans

  • 10 percent of your health care bills.

  • 150 billion dollars a year.

  • In 10 years, it's set to double.

  • 300 billion dollars a year.

  • And let's be honest, guys, you ain't got that cash.

  • (Laughter)

  • I came here to start a food revolution

  • that I so profoundly believe in.

  • We need it. The time is now.

  • We're in a tipping-point moment.

  • I've been doing this for seven years.

  • I've been trying in America for seven years.

  • Now is the time when it's ripe -- ripe for the picking.

  • I went to the eye of the storm.

  • I went to West Virginia, the most unhealthy state in America.

  • Or it was last year.

  • We've got a new one this year, but we'll work on that next season.

  • (Laughter)

  • Huntington, West Virginia.

  • Beautiful town.

  • I wanted to put heart and soul and people,

  • your public,

  • around the statistics that we've become

  • so used to.

  • I want to introduce you to some of the people that I care about.

  • Your public. Your children.

  • I want to show a picture of my friend Brittany.

  • She's 16 years old.

  • She's got six years to live

  • because of the food that she's eaten.

  • She's the third generation of Americans

  • that hasn't grown up within a food environment

  • where they';ve been taught to cook at home or in school,

  • or her mom, or her mom's mom.

  • She has six years to live.

  • She's eating her liver to death.

  • Stacy, the Edwards family.

  • This is a normal family, guys.

  • Stacy does her best, but she's third-generation as well;

  • she was never taught to cook at home or in school.

  • The family's obese.

  • Justin, here, 12 years old.

  • He's 350 pounds.

  • He gets bullied, for God's sake.

  • The daughter there, Katie, she's four years old.

  • She's obese before she even gets to primary school.

  • Marissa. She' all right. She's one of your lot.

  • But you know what? Her father, who was obese,

  • died in her arms.

  • And then the second-most-important man in her life,

  • her uncle, died of obesity.

  • And now her step-dad is obese.

  • You see, the thing is

  • obesity and diet-related disease

  • doesn't just hurt the people that have it;

  • it's all of their friends, families,

  • brothers, sisters.

  • Pastor Steve.

  • An inspirational man. One of my early allies in Huntington, West Virginia.

  • H's at the sharp knife-edge of this problem.

  • He has to bury the people, OK?

  • And he's fed up with it. He's fed up with burying his friends,

  • and his family, his community.

  • Come winter, three times as many people die.

  • He's sick of it.

  • This is preventable disease. Waste of life.

  • By the way, this is what they get buried in.

  • We're not geared up to do this.

  • Can't even get them out the door, and I'm being serious.

  • Can't even get them there. Forklift.

  • OK, I see it as a triangle, OK?

  • This is our landscape of food.

  • I need you to understand it.

  • You've probably heard all this before,

  • but let's just go back over it.

  • Over the last 30 years,

  • what's happened that's ripped the heart out of this country?

  • Let's be frank and honest.

  • Well. Modern-day life.

  • Let's start with the Main Street.

  • Fast food has taken over the whole country. We know that.

  • The big brands are some of the most important powers,

  • powerful powers in this country.

  • Supermarkets as well.

  • Big companies. Big companies.

  • 30 years ago, most of the food

  • was largely local and largely fresh.

  • Now it's largely processed and full of all sorts of additives,

  • extra ingredients, and you know the rest of the story.

  • Portion size is obviously a massive, massive problem.

  • Labeling is a massive problem.

  • The labeling in this country is a disgrace.

  • They want to be self ... They want to self-police themselves.

  • The industry wants to self-police themselves.

  • What, in this kind of climate? They don't deserve it.

  • How can you say something is low-fat when it's full of so much sugar?

  • Home.

  • The biggest problem with the home

  • is that used to be the heart

  • of passing on food and food culture,

  • what made our society.

  • That isn't happening anymore.

  • And you know, as we go to work and as life changes,

  • and as life always evolves,

  • we kind of have to look at it holistically --

  • step back for a moment, and re-address the balance.

  • It ain't happening. Hasn't happened for 30 years.

  • I want to show you a situation

  • that is very normal

  • right now. The Edwards family.

  • (Video) Jamie Oliver: Let's have a talk.

  • This stuff goes through you and your family's body

  • every week.

  • And I need you to know that this is going to kill your children early.

  • How are you feeling?

  • Stacy: Just feeling really sad and depressed right now.

  • But, you know, I want my kids to succeed in life

  • and this isn't going to get them there.

  • But I'm killing them.

  • JO: Yes you are. You are.

  • But we can stop that.

  • Normal. Let's get onto schools,

  • something that I'm fairly much a specialist in.

  • OK. School.

  • What is school? Who invented it? What's the purpose of school?

  • School was always invented to arm us with the tools

  • to make us creative, do wonderful things,

  • make us earn a living, etc., etc., etc.

  • You know, it's been kind of in this sort of tight box for a long, long time.

  • OK?

  • But we haven't really evolved it

  • to deal with the health catastrophes of America, OK?

  • School food is something

  • that most kids -- 31 million a day, actually --

  • have twice a day, more than often,

  • breakfast and lunch, 180 days of the year.

  • So you could say that school food is quite important, really,

  • judging the circumstances.

  • (Laughter)

  • Before I crack into my rant,

  • which I'm sure you're waiting for ...

  • (Laughter)

  • I need to say one thing, and it's so important

  • in hopefully the magic that happens and unfolds

  • in the next three months.

  • The lunch ladies, the lunch cooks of America ...

  • I offer myself as their ambassador.

  • I'm not slacking them off.

  • They're doing the best they can do.

  • They're doing their best.

  • But they're doing what they're told,

  • and what they're being told to do is wrong.

  • The system is highly run by accountants.

  • There's not enough, or any,

  • food-knowledgeable people in the business.

  • There's a problem.

  • If you're not a food expert, and you've got tight budgets,

  • and it's getting tighter, then you can't be creative,

  • you can't duck and dive and write different things around things.

  • If you're an accountant, and a box-ticker,

  • the only thing you can do in these circumstances

  • is buy cheaper shit.

  • Now, the reality is,

  • the food that your kids get every day is fast food,

  • it's highly processed,

  • there's not enough fresh food in there at all.

  • You know, the amount of additives, E numbers, ingredients you wouldn't believe ...

  • There's not enough veggies at all. French fries are considered a vegetable.

  • Pizza for breakfast. They don't even get given crockery.

  • Knives and forks? No, they're too dangerous.

  • They have scissors in the class room

  • but knives and forks, no.

  • And the way I look at it is, if you don't have knives and forks in your school,

  • you're purely endorsing,

  • from a state level, fast food. Because it's handheld.

  • And yes, by the way, it is fast food. It's sloppy joes,

  • it's burgers, it's wieners,

  • it's pizzas, it's all of that stuff.

  • 10 percent of what we spend on healthcare, as I said earlier,

  • is on obesity. And it's going to double.

  • We're not teaching our kids.

  • There is no statutory right to teach kids about food,

  • elementary or secondary school. OK?

  • We don't teach kids about food. Right?

  • And this is a little clip from an elementary school,

  • which is very common in England.

  • Video: Who knows what this is?

  • Child: Potatoes. Jamie Oliver: Potato? So, you think these are potatoes?

  • Do you know what that is?

  • Do you know what that is? Child: Broccoli?

  • JO: What about this? Our good old friend.

  • Do you know what this is honey? Child: Celery.

  • JO: No. What do you think this is? Child: Onion. JO: Onion? No.

  • Jamie Oliver: Immediately you get a really clear sense

  • of do the kids know anything about where food comes from.

  • Video: JO: Who knows what that is? Child: Uh, pear.

  • JO: What do you think this is? Child: I don't know.

  • JO: If the kids don't know what stuff is,

  • then they'd never eat it.

  • (Laughter)

  • JO: Normal. England and America,

  • England and America.

  • Guess what fixed that. Guess what fixed that.

  • Two one-hour sessions.

  • We've got to start teaching our kids

  • about food in schools, period.

  • (Applause)

  • I want to tell you about something,

  • I want to tell you about something that kind of

  • epitomizes the trouble that we're in guys. OK?

  • I want to talk about something so basic as milk.

  • Every kid has the right to milk at school.

  • Your kids will be having milk at school, breakfast and lunch. Right?

  • They'll be having two bottles. Okay?

  • And most kids do.

  • But milk ain't good enough anymore.

  • Because someone at the milk board, right -- and don't get me wrong,

  • I support milk, but someone on the milk board,

  • probably paid a lot of money for some geezer

  • to work out that if you put loads of flavorings and colorings

  • and sugar in milk, right,

  • more kids will drink it. Yeah.

  • (Claps)

  • And obviously now that's going to catch on.

  • The apple board is going to work out

  • that if they make toffee apples they'll eat more apples as well.

  • Do you know what I mean?

  • For me, there ain't no need to flavor the milk.

  • Okay? There is sugar in everything.

  • I know the ins and outs of those ingredients.

  • It's in everything. Even the milk hasn't escaped

  • the kind of modern day problems.

  • There's our milk. There's our carton.

  • In that is nearly as much sugar

  • as one of your favorite cans of fizzy pop.

  • And they are having two a day.

  • So, let me just show you.

  • We've got one kid, here,

  • having, you know, eight tablespoons of sugar a day.

  • You know, there's your week.

  • There's your month.

  • And I've taken the liberty of putting in

  • just the five years of elementary school sugar,

  • just from milk.

  • Now, I don't know about you guys,

  • but judging the circumstances, right,

  • any judge in the whole world,

  • would look at the statistics and the evidence,

  • and they would find any government of old

  • guilty of child abuse. That's my belief.

  • (Applause)

  • Now, if I came up here, and I wish I could come up here today,

  • and hang a cure for AIDS or cancer,

  • you'd be fighting and scrambling to get to me.

  • This, all this bad news, is preventable.

  • That's the good news.

  • It's very very preventable.

  • So, let's just think about, we got a problem here,

  • we need to reboot.

  • Okay so, in my world what do we need to do?

  • Here is the thing, right.

  • It can not just come from one source.

  • To reboot and make real tangible change,

  • real change, so that I could look you in the white of the eyes

  • and say, "In 10 years time,

  • the history of your children's lives,

  • happiness -- and let's not forget, you're clever if you eat well,

  • you know you're going to live longer,

  • all of that stuff, it will look different. OK?"

  • So, supermarkets.

  • Where else do you shop so religiously?

  • Week in, week out.

  • How much money do you spend, in your life, in a supermarket?

  • Love them. They just sell us what we want. All right.

  • They owe us, to put a food ambassador

  • in every major supermarket.

  • They need to help us shop. They need to show us how to cook,

  • quick, tasty, seasonal meals

  • for people that are busy.

  • This is not expensive.

  • It is done in some. And it needs to be done across the board

  • in America soon, and quick.

  • The big brands, you know, the food brands,

  • need to put food education

  • at the heart of their businesses.

  • I know, easier said than done.

  • It's the future. It's the only way.

  • Fast food. With the fast food industry

  • you know, it's very competitive.

  • I've had loads of secret papers and dealings

  • with fast food restaurants.

  • I know how they do it.

  • I mean basically they've weaned us on

  • to these hits of sugar, salt and fat, and x, y, and z.

  • And everyone loves them. Right?

  • So, these guys are going to be part of the solution.

  • But we need to get the government to work

  • with all of the fast food purveyors and the restaurant industry.

  • And over a five, six, seven year period

  • wean of us off the extreme amounts

  • of fat, sugar, fat and all the other non-food ingredients.

  • Now, also, back to the sort of big brands, labeling,

  • I said earlier, is an absolute farce,

  • and has got to be sorted.

  • OK, school.

  • Obviously in schools we owe it to them

  • to make sure those 180 days of the year,

  • from that little precious age of four,

  • til 18, 20, 24, whatever,

  • they need to be cooked

  • proper fresh food

  • from local growers on site. OK?

  • There needs to be a new standard of fresh proper food

  • for your children. Yeah?

  • (Applause)

  • Under the circumstances, it's profoundly important

  • that every single American child leaves school

  • knowing how to cook 10 recipes

  • that will save their life.

  • Life skills.

  • (Applause)

  • That means that they can be students, young parents,

  • and be able to sort of duck and dive

  • around the basics of cooking,

  • no matter what recession hits them next time. If you can cook

  • recession money doesn't matter.

  • If you can cook, time doesn't matter.

  • The workplace. We hadn't really talked about it.

  • You know, it's now time for corporate responsibility

  • to really look at what they feed

  • or make available to their staff.

  • The staff are the moms and dads of America's children.

  • Marissa, her father died in her hand,

  • I think she'd be quite happy

  • if corporate America could start feeding their staff properly.

  • Definitely they shouldn't be left out.

  • Let's go back to the home.

  • Now, look, if we do all this stuff, and we can,

  • it's so achievable. You can care and be commercial.

  • Absolutely.

  • But the home needs to start passing on

  • cooking again, for sure.

  • For sure, pass it on as a philosophy.

  • And for me it's quite romantic.

  • But it's about if one person teaches three people

  • how to cook something,

  • and now they teach three of their mates,

  • that only has to repeat itself 25 times,

  • and that's the whole population of America.

  • Romantic, yes, but,

  • most importantly,

  • it's about trying to get people to realize

  • that every one of your individual efforts

  • makes a difference.

  • We've got to put back what's been lost.

  • Huntington Kitchen. Huntington, where I made this program,

  • you know, we've got this prime time program that hopefully

  • will inspire people to really get on this change.

  • I truly believe that change will happen.

  • Huntington's Kitchen. I work with a community.

  • I worked in the schools. I found local sustainable funding

  • to get every single school in the area,

  • from the junk, onto the fresh food.

  • Six-and-a-half grand per school.

  • (Applause)

  • That's all it takes. Six-and-a-half grand per school.

  • The Kitchen in 25 grand a month. Okay?

  • This can do 5,000 people a year,

  • which is 10 percent of their population.

  • And it's people on people.

  • You know, it's local cooks teaching local people.

  • It's free cooking lessons guys, free cooking lessons in the main street.

  • This is real, tangible change, real, tangible change.

  • Around America, if we just look back now,

  • there is plenty of wonderful things going on.

  • There is plenty of beautiful things going on. There are angels

  • around America doing great things

  • in schools, farm to school set-ups,

  • garden set-ups, education.

  • There are amazing people doing this already.

  • The problem is they all want to roll out what their doing

  • to the next school, and the next.

  • But there is no cash.

  • We need to recognize the experts and the angels quickly,

  • identify them, and allow them to easily find the resource

  • to keep rolling out what they're already doing,

  • and doing well.

  • Businesses of America need to support

  • Mrs. Obama to do the things that she wants to do.

  • (Applause)

  • And look, I know it's weird

  • having an English person standing here before you

  • talking about all this.

  • All I can say is I care. I'm a father.

  • And I love this country.

  • And I believe truly, actually,

  • that if change can be made in this country,

  • beautiful things will happen around the world. If America does it

  • I believe other people will follow.

  • It's incredibly important.

  • (Applause)

  • When I was in Huntington, trying to get a few things to work

  • when they weren't, I though if I had a magic wand

  • what would I do? And I thought, you know what?

  • I'd just love to be put in front of some of the most amazing

  • movers and shakers in America.

  • And a month later TED phoned me up and gave me this award.

  • I'm here.

  • So, my wish.

  • Dyslexic, so I'm a bit slow.

  • My wish

  • is for you to help a strong

  • sustainable movement

  • to educate every child

  • about food,

  • to inspire families to cook again,

  • and to empower people everywhere

  • to fight obesity.

  • (Applause)

  • Thank you.

  • (Applause)

Sadly,

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