2010 TED Prize Winner - Jaime Oliver
I have a little soft spot for Jamie Oliver… in my opinion, he was the first really cute TV chef worth watching for more than just his food. His lovely English accent with endearing lisp got me every time, and of course with a show called the Naked Chef, how could you not watch! Seriously. No, really, he’s like super cute and good chef or not, I can’t say the same for Mario Batali. Anyway Jamie Oliver.
He’s 34 years old, and since 1999 he’s has a whopping SEVENTEEN TV shows. This guy is an empire and just eats, breathes, and poops pure, simple, no-fuss cooking. (What? It’s true!) He’s super passionate about food, good quality ingredients and passing on that passion to children. “Disgusted at what rubbish our kids were getting fed at school“, in 2005 Jamie donned a hair-net and got behind the line in UK’s school cafeterias in his show ‘Jamie’s School Dinners‘. His most recent venture, called ‘Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution‘, was a little controversial and hit a tender spot with us overweight Americans.
He traveled to Huntington, West Virginia, a town called the unhealthiest in America. Ouch. Knowing that we’ve lost our ability to feed ourselves outside the packaged, processed foods that are killing us, Jamie literally went into people’s home to talk to them about eating real food, learning to cook, and passing those skills on to their children so they can bounce out of that “unhealthiest town” label.
Apparently he was met with luke warm enthusiasm, which seems a little ungrateful to me, and the contant needling and pooh-poohing by locals even brought him to tears! Sheesh… and all he wanted to do was help! That show is set to debut in March on ABC… you can bet that I’ll be watching. Hell, I’ll watch that guy slaughter a pig.
Anyway, when I found out that Jamie (we’re on a first named basis, you see) won this years TED prize, I was so so happy. TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design is a non-profit devoted to “ideas worth spreading”, and hosts these talks where awesome people in those loosely defined categories come and talk about whatever it is they’re passionate about. Jamie starts his talk thusly: “Sadly, in the next 18 minutes when I do our chat, four Americans that are alive, will be dead, through the food that they eat.”
Love it. Grabs your attention, right?
Check out the rest of his TED speech here, and the awesome standing ovation he gets at the end. Inspiring! Those citizens of Huntington, West Virginia should be ashamed to ever have doubted Jamie!
