He wants to challenge most Americans’ perception of food, and demonstrate how eating real food can diminish our country’s problems of obesity, heart disease and diabetes. He believes that this is especially true for children, so their lives are not shortened by the bad habits of their families, schools and society.

In the six-part series, Jamie heads to Huntington, West Virginia because it has been called the unhealthiest city in America. Jamie wants to do something about that. The 3 main challenges that Jaime wants to take on in Huntington in hopes of inspiring the rest of the nation are:

School Meals: To replace the processed school food with meals that were cooked from fresh ingredients, met the nutrition standards, and appealed to the kids. The school meals I trialled are now being rolled out to the rest of the school district.

Home: To show families that cooking at home from scratch is better for them, not to mention cheaper. We set up a community kitchen in Huntington that holds two cooking classes a day for local families. It is now being run by a local healthcare charity.

Main Street: To get the whole town cooking again and show people that they do have an alternative to the processed and fast food that’s invaded the American main street. We went into churches, colleges, workplaces, the local fire station, and as many places as we could think of, to teach as many people as possible a few quick and simple meals. That has changed people’s lives.

Boku applauds Jamie Oliver for taking such an interest in teaching children about nutrition, food and cooking so that they will be able to reverse the foods trends taking over the country and the world. Through this television show he is opening people’s eyes to the dangers of unhealthy eating and the nutritional superiority of real food.

To learn more about Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution visit:

http://www.jamieoliver.com/campaigns/jamies-food-revolution

And don’t forget to watch the show on Fridays at 9:00 PM on ABC!

You can get a glimpse of it here:

Michael Pollan’s 2008 book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto was his follow up to 2006′s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. The latter remaining #1 on the New York Times Non-Fiction Bestseller List for an astounding six weeks!
That likely means that many people are interested in what Pollan is writing about: the need for people to eat real food

Pollan asserts why food itself needs defending:

“Because most of what we’re consuming today is not food, and how we’re consuming it — in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone — is not really eating. Instead of food, we’re consuming “edible foodlike substances” — no longer the products of nature but of food science. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy. In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.”

This is definitely a message that needs to be spread far and wide to help change people’s minds about what is actually food, and what isn’t. This is how we can become as healthy as possible.

In Defense of Food can be found at any local brick and mortar or online bookstore and in many libraries.  If you’d just like to learn more about Michael Pollan, his books or to see his ongoing public speaking schedule visit:

www.michaelpollan.com