Sunday, April 17, 2011

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

I didn't get to see the first season of this show but did get to view the first episode of the new season. This season Jamie is in Los Angles hoping to change people's attitudes about food. What is good to eat, what is bad to eat. He focuses alot on what children are being feed in their school cafeterias and the fast food business. I hope to be able to follow along through this season. Lots of great information. The one section of the first episode that stuck in my mind was his demonstration about how most ground beef in America is processed. Not only that, but that the USDA doesn't feel it is necessary to label on the meat how much ammonia the beef is washed in. That was a real eye opener for me. Jamie said the only real way you can know that you are getting real ground beef is to watch the butcher put it in the grinder and grind it in front of you. I have to admit that our family eats alot of red meat. It is the cheapest thing available. But I think I will need to rethink what types of meat I feed my family and where I get my ground beef from. Some of our favorite meals (tacos, spaghetti, hamburgers) require ground beef and I'm sorry but the rest of my family is just not going to tolerate ground turkey, etc. Although we did eat some ground venison mixed with ground beef in the past couple of months. Mostly we liked it as hamburgers. I am pondering finding a somewhat local source for ground beef and buy in larger quantities.This next tidbit of information is for my friend Kelly, because she will really get a kick our of it. Still working on my hubby about the meatless meals thing. One night this last week we had cheese ravioli, salad, and bread. He immediately went to the fridge to pull out some leftover taco and was going to try it on the pasta because he felt he needed the meat in his dish. I asked him to put the meat back and try the meal as prepared. He did admit after eating that he did feel full and satisfied. Hopefully he won't ever read this. I thought it was kind of comical.

2 comments:

Deb said...

That demonstration of the "hamburger" was revolting. I about tossed my cookies. We watched most of Food Inc (movie on food from Netflix), and they talked about that too.

I'll never eat another McDonalds hamburger as long as I live.

sheila said...

We are reading Omnivore's Dilemma right now, at lunch (LOL), and the kids find it highly distressing. We don't get Jamie's shows on regular cable so I haven't seen this new series, but we saw the other series and it was so depressing seeing all those kids unable to recognize any vegetable at all - even a potato.

When I took nutrition classes they always emphasized how unsanitary American meat processing is compared to Canadian processing - I think because of the sheer quantities - and it's always stuck with me. Too bad really, because I'm quite sure it doesn't have to be. But it's like Big AgriTech (aka Monsanto): they want it their way or else.