I’ve been experiencing various levels of annoyance at various times over the last few days. Much of this is heat(-wave) related, but mostly it’s from witnessing the brouhaha over the Paula Deen “scandal’ in the food media world. Practically every media outfit has their own take on it, but the facts are these:

- Deen (the “butter queen“, or as Frank Bruni put it, the ‘deep-fried doyenne of a fatty, buttery subgenre of putatively Southern cooking’) recently announced that she has Type 2 diabetes;

- She has known this for three years already;

- She is receiving money from Novo Nordisk to plug Victoza, a new diabetes drug (with as yet questionable benefits: those evil Danes!). Victoza is pretty expensive compared to other drugs on the market – think $500 a month vs. $20 a month.

The scandal includes any or all of the following:

a) she has deceived her audiences

b) she is a shill

c) she is a shilling a product that ordinary (read: poor) people cannot afford 

d) she is still fat (well, no one says it like that, but that’s what they mean when they comment on her not having made ‘significant lifestyle changes’)

e) she wasted three years not teaching her viewers how to cook healthy food.

Now, I’m not going to enter into the shilling debate. This piece in the LA Times did a fairly good job of convincing me the major problem with this, which is the illusion of a quick-fix solution that Deen’s deal with the evil Danes promotes:

‘The life of a diabetic is somewhat less than swell — but Novo Nordisk is selling swell, alongside drug companies that promise to medicate away depression, gas, incontinence, clogged arteries and fibromyalgia. … Support and encouragement is one thing, but what we’re being sold is magical thinking. In the battle between healthcare reality and fantasy, Paula Deen is small potatoes (steamed, skins on, no butter), but what she represents matters: another attempt to market immortality to a culture that’s particularly in love with misbehaving, followed by an easy fix.’

What does irk me, though, are the various permutations of a) and e), above. Suddenly now (or then, as it happens) that she has diabetes, Deen is only allowed to cook “healthy” food on television? Suddenly she now has a responsibility to make her audiences healthy too, and thereby fix the diabetes/obesity crisis? Maybe it would be a good idea for her to stop tasting and eating the food that she is apparently so good at making (even though she has pointed out that – surprise surprise – what we see her make on TV is not actually how she eats every day, and that her shows are for entertainment), but that shouldn’t stop her fans from making her fatty, buttery recipes if they damn well please. Should watching Anthony Bourdain sucking foie off a plate come with a diabetes advisory?

Bruni’s piece does an excellent job of describing the classist hypocrisies at play in much of this finger-wagging. But I am less disturbed by that than the evidence, once again, of how ready people are to blame their problems on someone else, and to expect someone else to fix them. It’s also an appetite for scandal which turns out to be a really convenient excuse to not think clearly about the actual issues, which as chef José Andrés also points out in this CBS interview, are quite simply not Paula Deen’s to fix.

Rant over. Now go buy the book.

I have been reading (and writing) about Mr. Oliver’s latest LA venture for some time now, but I didn’t get to *enjoy* the full spectacle of the first episode until last night. Late at night was a stupid time to watch, because it sent me to bed depressed.

Smite me with your bleeding heart if you must, but I am not depressed about the obesity “epidemic” in Los Angeles, America, or the rest of the world for that matter. Which is not to say I don’t find it sad that so many people get it wrong when it comes to feeding themselves and their families. Nor that I don’t find it sad that some children are made to eat something resembling airplane food on a mostly-daily basis. But getting depressed about these things would be a waste of my time and energy, a) because the reasons for this state of affairs are much more complex than even I dare to imagine that I fully comprehend, and b) because there is little I can do to change it.

Not so Mr. O. He’s depressed alright. And he also has the conceit to imagine that a) he understands everything about the system that he is taking on, and b) that it his responsibility – nay, his right – to take this system on. He keeps talking about how it is his “job” to do this and that: his “job” to try to force the LAUSD to let him into their schools (where he’s been banned from filming); his “job” to try to persuade Dino – the nice man who let Jamie into his burger joint Patra’s – to make his burgers with grass-fed Black Angus beef, and his milkshakes with yoghurt instead of ice cream. Dino really is a nice man. He lets Jamie mess about in his kitchen, and lets him fix a yoghurt smoothie, and then rightly responds: “I tried it, and it tasted good, but he missed the point. This is a great drink, but it’s not a milkshake.”

Here’s what Dino looks like when he’s explaining that Jamie is crazy for thinking that he can take burgers and fries off the menu at a burger joint:

And here’s what Dino looks like when Jamie tells him that using grass-fed Black Angus beef for his burgers will make his burgers cost $4,89, instead of $2,69 (warning: picture of a scared man):

I nominate Dino as the Food Revolution hero, because Dino gets it right. He gets that Jamie is missing the point if he thinks that putting a smoothie on the menu of a burger joint is going to do a damn thing to curb obesity. I’ve never been to LA, but I’m also pretty sure that people who want smoothies can find them elsewhere. Dino gets that he is running a business, and servicing customers who come to his restaurant because there’s something on his menu that they want to eat. He gets that there is a difference between freedom of choice and responsibility.

What Jamie Oliver does not get is that saying, on leaving Patras, “I don’t know if I can work with Dino” is in fact a very stupid thing to say, because he does not have to “work with” Dino, and neither does Dino have to work with him. Just as the LA Unified Schools District has no mandate whatsoever to work with Jamie Oliver. (Which they did in fact offer to do, just not on camera. But that, as someone else put it summarily, ‘is not a TV show‘.)

But my case is not really with Jamie Oliver, just as my case, in another context, is not with quacks like Gillian McKeith. No, my case is with the many people who do listen to them, and who do not get that these people, who may even have their hearts and concerns in all the right places, are simply not the authorities that they make themselves out to be. What’s the harm, especially if *something* improves? The harm is that worshipping pseudo-authorities is a slippery gateway to compromising all our rational decision-making faculties, believing whatever scare stories and half-baked statistics they throw about, and soon everybody will be taking advice on how to live their lives from someone called Oprah. Oh wait…

(And oh, if do ever find yourself at Patra’s, don’t forget to try the new Jamie Oliver Revolution burger, made with grass-fed Black Angus beef. If you’ve got $4,95 to drop, that is:)

Well, OK, I felt a little sick first, but that’s only because I’m not used to stuffing hundreds of sugary ‘pillules‘ into my mouth at once. Which is really to say that I’m not used to stuffing my mouth full of sugar (unless it comes in the form of a brownie). But once I had washed them down with a good glug of water, I felt pretty good, and I can now say from personal experience – along with the experiences of my fellow overdosers – what we already know of homeopathy: there’s nothing in it. Except sugar, of course, and a large dose of bullshit.

This is serious. Do the 50,000+ fools (the Beckhams and the Queen included) who opt for homeopathic treatment every year in the UK realise how many empty carbs are in that stuff? And here everyone’s been pointing fingers at McDonald’s and Coca Cola for making the world fat.

Yes, there is one born every minute, but if you are going to stuff yourself full of sugar, you could at least make sure it tastes of a brownie.

“Normally getting into schools isn’t a problem. We’ve never had a total shutdown. In my country, it would be illegal.”

I’m intrigued as to which part of this situation could be considered illegal in the UK. Not allowing a celebrity chef to film a documentary in schools? Not allowing a celebrity chef to interfere with issues of public health (if indeed school lunches are that)? Or perhaps not paying attention to Jamie Oliver?

But the main problem here is not really any of the above, but rather that first word: “Normally.” There is really nothing “normal” in the world of Jamie Oliver, or in the world of celebrity chefs saving the fat world from its fat self, because everything is made up as they go along. And luckily for Mr. O, they’ve been going along quite swimmingly, not least thanks to his “activist” endorsement by TED last year.

Until now, that is. Which also makes it hard to not actually feel sorry for the man when you see a headline like this:

“I’m finding it really hard to tell the truth in this country,” he apparently said – adding that he’s never been “so deflated” in his whole career. Now, say what you like about him – and I have plenty to say myself – but the only reason that he’s been able to get to the self-delusional position of believing that he is some sort of truthsayer is because no one has ever gotten in his way before (OK, a bit here and there, but they “normally” come round to his side and everyone comes out larfin’).

It’s all a very curious drama to watch – including the sideshow which features Michelle Obama hooking up with Walmart (not for the first time, mind you) to promote “healthy” eating: some say it rocks, while others think it’s doomed.

And while the celebrities sulk and the corporations flex their (friend’s) well-toned arms, most people will probably carry on chomping their Pop Tarts and not giving a crap how many calories they eat.

Let’s edit that a bit and apply it to Jamie Oliver’s American “Food Revolution” for a near-perfect description of what’s going on – ‘When a smutty work of Reality TV about a very serious issue gets the world talking ad nauseum, you can be sure it has touched something in the public mood’.

The ambiguity of “something in the public mood” is apt too, because even the fast-talking public can’t seem to figure out what exactly the issue is. The series (which no one outside the US has actually seen – except for me, perhaps, living as I do in a magic twilight zone where there are no broadcasting boundaries) is about “fighting obesity”. But the gamut of responses gives the lie to the possibility that it is about any one thing, which is exactly what most commentators seem to miss.

For television stations, the biggest news was that when it premiered on a Friday night, it was the highest-rated Adult 18-49 premiere for any network on the night (returning or new) since September 2007. (Even when it was rebroadcast that Sunday evening, nearly 1.5m people tuned in to watch Jamie rather than Desperate Housewives). With these kinds of numbers, who cares what it’s about, people are watching!

Early reviews criticized the show (which competes, let’s not forget, with Desperate Housewives) for regurgitating “the worst of reality TV pap“, and for not stressing “our culture’s politicization of food — the whole arugula divide, the high cost of eating right, the class issues over portion size, the constant character judgments strewn between a fine meal and the drive-thru.” Problem noted: Reality TV is not political enough.

The “our culture” in the above anticipates some of the most vehement “analyses” which postulate that Jamie’s problem is that he is a ‘pushy Brit‘ – or more accurately, that ‘Americans don’t take kindly to being reproached, particularly by one of their former colonial masters.’ Problem noted: Jamie is British. (Question: why are more people apparently listening to him than to their very own Rachael Ray, or Michelle Obama, both of whom are also “fighting obesity”?).

Another writer summarily debunks the British angle as ‘nonsensical and egocentric’ and offers her own take on Jamie’s “failure”, which has nothing to do with anything, really: ‘In truth, what makes America think Britain is small isn’t some limey guy falling on his face while dressed up like a pea; it’s Britain’s neurotic obsession with what America thinks in the first place.’ Problem noted: America and Britain have broken up.

Then there are the serious, “in-depth” analyses like this one which spends 6 pages explaining why the series has has ‘flunked out’ (I’m sure ABC would beg to differ). To the author’s credit, there are one or two intelligent statements like that ‘the “Food Revolution” is a failure because the entertainment narrative is unable to deal with complexities or systemic issues’. (Problem op cit: Reality TV is not political enough). But that would have been much more credible had it acknowledged the more general truth that Reality TV is probably not the place to deal with systemic issues in the first place – but that this example (like Jamie’s School Dinners before it) does indeed show that Reality TV might be a useful place to get people talking and maybe eventually making *some* kind of change. But this entire article is so stuck up the arse of the system that Jamie Oliver is trying to do something about that its lightbulb moment is acknowledging that ‘after the first two months of the new meals, children were overwhelmingly unhappy with the food, [chocolate and strawberry] milk consumption plummeted and many students dropped out of the school lunch program, which one school official called “staggering.” On top of that food costs were way over budget, the school district was saddled with other unmanageable expenses, and Jamie’s failure to meet nutritional guidelines had school officials worried they would lose federal funding and the state department of education would intervene.’ Problem noted: We don’t have time to wait for revolutions.

Meanwhile, someone who actually works with school lunches in the US responds with a depressing confirmation that the Reality aspect of the show (‘A high-school cafeteria that serves nothing but pizza, fries, spaghetti, and iceberg lettuce in the salad bar? A kitchen manager who drinks soda in the kitchen and seemingly spends more time complaining than working? Adults who think students won’t eat lunch if the meal doesn’t come with fries? A food service director with a permanent smirk on her face who appears to hope the whole experiment fails?’) are dangerously close to reality: ‘I’ll cut to the chase: yes. These scenes are tragically ubiquitous in our nation’s public school system.‘ Problem noted: Reality TV is too real. Lest I misrepresent her, she does actually ‘suspect that Oliver will ultimately be successful on some level, if not in Huntington, then in countless other American school districts’.

Marion Nestle at The Atlantic is similarly sympathetic, and refreshingly level-headed too: ‘Take a deep breath. Try not to get turned off by Oliver’s statement that “the food revolution starts here” (no Jamie, it doesn’t). Try not to cringe when he calls the food service workers “girls” and “luv” (okay, it’s a cultural problem). Remember: this is reality TV.’

Well, I could go on, but that would be boring. In fact the only piece I’d actually recommend reading in its entirety is this one from The Times, which impressively paints a good picture of how the Naked Chef found some clothes. It also contains the little gem that one of “best food moments” of Jamie’s life was at a “braai” barbeque in South Africa with people who “had nothing” – except, that is ‘chicks with their boobs out looking sexy and fellas looking all buff with their mirrored sunglasses. And the tunes going off and homemade hooch…’. His only regret, we are told, ‘was he didn’t have a film crew with him to capture it.’

Sigh. In South Africa we just have reality.

About half way through the film, we witness Governor Schwarze-muscle announcing one of the first bans on junk foods in schools – “This will be the toughest school nutrition reformation in the nation,” he proclaims. “We are going to terminate obesity in California once and for all.”

Then comes a scene which one reviewer describes as “Perhaps the most outrageous scene in Killer at Large….  The setting is the perimeter of an enclosed yard; it’s around noon.  A whole gaggle of kids, between eight and ten years old, are pressed up against a chain link fence, grasping through the links to procure some meager sustenance from altruistic aid workers who are unloading supplies of food from stacks of boxes. There’s a certain mad desperation to it all, like we are watching bare survival at its most primal and basic.”

“Is this some sort of refugee camp in a war torn Third World country?” he asks. “Some horrible prison for children in some benighted corner of the globe, far from America? In fact no, it’s an elementary school in California, and the adults handing food to the children are concerned parents. But the “who” involved is not the real shocking part – it’s what they are passing to them:  piles and piles of junk food – cookies, candy, soda, etc.”

Well, the “who” here does matter, I think. Because this particular scene is NOT from Hollywood High, as we are led to believe by the narrator. Here are a few shots from the actual movie (compiled with the aid of the snipping tool, my favourite new Windows 7 gagdet):

If, like me, you have been keeping up with the doings of a certain Mr. Oliver over the years, you’ll very quickly recognise this exact scene as that of the infamous “sinner ladies” who were demonised for selling “junk” to school children after they refused to eat the “healthy” meals that Mr. O helped to put in their canteens. It was The Sun that published the infamous picture in the UK in 2006, which unfortunately I cannot reprint here without permission (!!), but you can click here to see it for yourself.

This one is from The Daily Mail:

The other reason that this was so easy to identify (and therefore seriously sloppy plagiarism) is because Julie Critchlow, the short-haired blond woman, went on to become a bit famous for getting an apology from Mr. O for badmouthing her, and for becoming one of the main players in his Ministry of Food series. Here they are in the first episode sharing a spot of curry in her living room:

Jamie’s Ministry of Food was also, incidentally, the “inspiration” for his upcoming Food Revolution USA, which is basically him taking his Rotherham show on the American road. Well, actually on the West Virginian road, to Huntington, the “unhealthiest city in America” (all of which surely also helped to getting Mr. O this year’s TED prize). Watch the splendiferous preview here.

I digress. This is not about Mr. O (for once). This is about the sensational twaddle that is Killer at Large. Could I be overreacting? If we’re having a conversation about whether obesity really is a killer, and at large, then perhaps. There are some truths to those claims, and a small forged scene doesn’t detract from the facts.

But we have to seriously question ALL of the “facts” when it turns out that even one of them is manufactured. Yes, that scene did take place, but in a different time and place (on a different continent!), and it is dishonest and shameful to present it as otherwise. Also, you can’t help wondering why bother? If obesity really is the killer at large that the filmmaker sets out to “document”, then why the need to falsify evidence at all?

Misrepresentation and intellectual dishonesty (or just laziness) are the killers at large. How are we supposed to get anywhere with this sort of rubbish making the rounds?

Need I say more?

Of course there are lots of medical doctors saying things too. ‘We live in an “obesogenic environment” ‘.’ True hunter-gatherers that we are, we’re all genetically programmed to not stop eating until all the food is gone’. Which begs the question: why, then, aren’t we ALL obese, and in the tragic situation of “having to” undergo liposuction at the age of twelve?

Well that’s because beneath all the talk of obesity as viral, global, “not your fault” (ie. BEWARE, it can GET YOU too),  is a beautifully masked lie that we are all the same. It’s this absurd game of political correctness for a bunch of “experts” to sit around and blame the environment (rather than people who just eat too much), when what they’re clearly doing is pitching their own tents on a desert island – somewhere naturally unaffected by the Plague. If it did come by, it would probably see that they have PhDs and grass-fed beef in their fridges, and just waft on by to the next Twinkie-sucking sucker. (It’s a clever Plague).

Me, I blame it all on the penny polony.

My friends gave me this and I didn’t eat it. Is something wrong with me?