Posts Tagged "food"
Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution is about to hit the USA – great to see social change in action!
You may have seen my earlier post about Jamie Oliver winning the TED prize with his campaign to teach every child about food. I’ve just watched the UK campaign, the TV show Ministry of Food (in the UK you can watch it online via that link) and it blew me away. It tells the story of the struggles and successes of how one man went to Rotherham, where hardly anyone cooks, and educated and inspired hundreds if not thousands of people to cook, and to teach others around them. Not to mention transforming a few individuals lives along the way. It’s really quite inspiring to realize that one person can make a difference, especially if we all just do it instead of imagining failure. And it’s great to see a celebrity use their influence as a force for good in the world.
Watching the show you really do get the sense that this is the beginning of a grassroots cultural revolution. People are starting to wake up to how badly we’ve been treating our bodies with the food we eat.
The campaign has already taken root in cities across the UK, with a new food education centre opened in Bradford, and the campaign is starting in Australia too.
If you’re in the USA or Canada be sure to watch Food Revolution, where Jamie goes to the unhealthiest town in America – Huntingdon, West Virginia, and tries to start the revolution there. Trailer above, it starts on ABC next Friday 26th March with a preview this Sunday.
And if you want to get involved, and especially if you can’t or don’t cook, then just watch some of these simple video recipes, try them and most importantly, pass it on.
You can support the campaign here (for Americans) or here (for Brits).
Get involved, and maybe we really can solve the world’s obesity problems, if not for this generation, then at least for our children.
(And I hope I am not being to preachy, but it’s rare that you see something that is so overwhelmingly a good thing. I feel everyone should know about it!)
Update: You can also check out the things we can learn from this from a career perspective in this article.
Teach every child about food – Jamie Oliver’s call to action (#TED)
Please, watch this video, and pass it to everyone you know.
Jamie Oliver has been awarded the TED Prize 2010 to help make his mission to re-educate society about the importance of home cooking, fresh food and eating well.
This is a solvable problem, which every one of us can help with. Sign up to help our children and our children’s children – in the USA, the UK and around the world.
Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce
Just came across this talk by Malcolm Gladwell telling a story of how the food industry learned about the need to identify different types of tastes rather than looking for the “most popular”. This ties in neatly with some of the ideas I have blogged about before about the need for anyone developing a product or service to find out your user personas and decide which ones to target, rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach.
First Impressions of India
India 2: Welcome to Ahmedabad
Le Meridien in Ahmedabad is a little odd. It is simultaneously amazing and disappointing. It is beautifully decorated with marble pillars, polished brass railings, glass chandeliers, and bowls of water with floating flower petals adding colour to the lobby. At first glance it looks like no expense has been spared. But once you get past the surface layer the reality seeps through, that this is just a facsimile of an expensive Western hotel, where something got lost in translation.
The bedrooms are large, with 2 beds, a desk, a comfy armchair and a large (42”) flat panel TV. A small table sits in front of the window with two fruit vaguely resembling an apple, and a knife. The first thing I noticed on walking into the room though was a damp smell, like laundry that hasn’t dried properly, which has not gone away over time. I think it’s something to do with the air-conditioning system. I started to unpack and found that there was only one small drawer, barely large enough for a couple of T-shirts. Maybe they don’t use drawers in India. The room itself is just a little bit dark and dingy. Looking out of the room I could see the river with a bridge over it, and between the hotel and the river I could see a cluster of run-down shacks that appeared to be some sort of slum settlement. I was struck by the contrast between the plush hotel and the poverty below, and felt a small pang of guilt.
After settling in we went for a swim. The indoor swimming pool (why they made it an indoor pool when it’s 35 degrees outside in October I have no idea!) is a magnificent affair, a long room with light marble floor and walls, and white Greco-Roman columns lining the poolside. At the end of the pool is a white stone carving of a mermaid sitting and holding a seashell from which streams of water trickle into the pool below. Between the columns are art deco painted murals of half dressed cherubic figures, much like you would see in an art gallery. A spiral wrought iron staircase takes you down from the changing room to the poolside. Five minutes into the swim, I discovered just how impractical this excessive design is – marble and water do not mix!
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