Essay about Teach Everychild About Food by Jamie Oliver

According to passionate chefs, America is at its â€Å"tipping point.† (Oliver, 2010, para 8) Over the past few decades food has took a drastic plunge towards unknown ingredients and chemicals. Most of society would agree that children are the future but surprising statistics make that hard to believe; they cannot become the future if they are being fed to death. Jamie Oliver and Ann Cooper are two of many chefs who are working hard to educate people about real food. Lectures given by each of them send the overall message that the future of humanity is within the food we are eating. Jamie Oliver’s lecture, â€Å"Teach every child about food† from 2010, opens up with the scary truth that Americans are putting upon themselves: â€Å"Diet-related disease†¦show more content†¦Many people are trying to freshen up schools in their areas but are unable to pass the revolution along to other schools due to lack of financial support. â€Å"We need to recognize the experts and the angels quickly, identify them, and allow them to easily find the resource to keep rolling out what theyre already doing, and doing well.† (Oliver, 2010, para 31) Schools are currently spending less about $500 a year on school food. In case that statistic is not sickening enough the additional information is given: an average of $3500 a year is spent on keeping a prisoner in jail. Throughout Cooper’s speech she pours out statistics on how money is being spent poorly. For example, â€Å"one gourmet coffee, one, is more †¦ than we are spending to feed kids for an entire week in our schools,† Cooper refers to a Starbucks coffee as a financial comparison. Contributing to the figures given by Oliver, $8 billion is being used to feed 30 million children every year; Cooper explains how that amount needs to double in order for children to receive real food at school. Out of all of the data that Cooper shares with the crowd the most intriguing is that only $50 billion is spent on vegetables a year. While that may sound like a lot, listeners learn that $200 billion is spent on diet related illness, $100 billion is spent on diet aids, and $110 billion is spent on fast food. Fast