Jamie Oliver Dumpster Dives? New ‘Food Waste’ Series in the Works
He may be banned in Los Angeles, but raucous chef Jamie Oliver is not even close to slowing down. The British chef is now reportedly working on a new television program that will target a growing food-related epidemic: food waste.
Radiotimes.com reports that while at the recent Cheltenham Literature Festival, chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall leaked the news about Oliver’s new show: “I know that in Jamie’s new series he will be looking at the issue of waste. And we know that if Jamie gets behind something he tends to make people sit up and take notice. It is something that we’re all very concerned about.”
Oliver made a name in the U.S. with his television program “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.” In its two seasons, Oliver set out to radically improve school district food systems in West Virginia and Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Unified School District was least accommodating—banning him from some premises and limiting his interactions with children. So he took to pop-up venues and his own mobile kitchen school where parents and children could learn basic tools for improving the quality of their meals and their health to address issues like obesity and type 2 diabetes.
And if the rumors are true about his next project, Oliver may have hit on a very interesting connection between the types of food we eat, and just how much we throw away.
Some experts suggest that as much as 40 percent of the world’s food supply ends up in landfills. It’s a startling number considering the 1.2 billion people around the world are considered food insecure. And we’re not helping matters either with diets of fast, processed foods. Cooking from scratch can better connect people with their food sources, making them less likely to waste. Oliver certainly knows this as Fearnley-Whittingstall said: “I have to take my hat off to Jamie who’s gone further afield than I have and put his neck on the line in very, very difficult situations with the specific aim of getting people who in our chattering middle-class terms barely know what good food is to discover it.”
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Image: Jamie Oliver
