What’s that funny-talking TV chef doing in my West Virginia hometown?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

By Jeff Young, Grist

It's about 8:45 a.m. and I'm sitting in an audio booth, waiting to talk to Brit celebrity chef Jaime Oliver on the other end of a high-quality line. I'm his third, set-'em-up-and-knock-'em-down "interview" of the morning. The night before he was on Letterman. He's 15 minutes late, and I have an uneasy feeling. Not about him being late. And not about being a cog in the hype machine for a TV show. No, I'm uneasy -- downright queasy -- because Oliver's new show, Food Revolution, takes aim at "America's unhealthiest town." And it's my hometown: Huntington, West Virginia.

I work in public radio. I don't own a TV. So of course I'm more than a little bothered by the thought of my little hometown made a spectacle on reality TV. When I imagine the tawdry titillation of the weepy confessional scenes I shudder.

Will it be a Food Revolution, or just plain revolting?

In case you missed the ubiquitous promos, Oliver's bringing his brand of foodie edutainment to America. We watch in wonder as he visits a Huntington school where kids can't name tomatoes. We titter as he opens the fridge of a fat Huntington woman and her obese kids, piling their greasy food on their sad little kitchen table. And I think, what does TV America make of it? Do they see the slow motion tragedy of poor school nutrition and an obesity epidemic? Do they see themselves in this? Or do they see the other, the hillbilly? They talk funny. They're dumb. They dig coal, handle snakes, and marry their cousins. What do you expect them to eat?

Appalachians have an "otherness" that makes us one of the last groups that even the politically correct can still comfortably, cruelly laugh at. I'm sure this added entertainment value is not lost on the likes of Ryan Seacrest, Oliver's executive producer. Mr. Oliver tells me he was not familiar with the stereotypes and the jokes. He loves HunTington, he tells me. (He emphasizes the first "t." We do not.)

Yes, I know Huntington has a food problem. I know that. I see it in my family members who suffer diabetes but still eat #######. Of course West Virginians eat #######. ####### is cheap, and nearly a quarter of Huntington residents live below the poverty line. I know.

But I also know that right around this time of year a lot of West Virginians take to the woods looking for bright green shoots and shiny white bulbs of the ramps pushing up through sloping, hillside soil among the trillium and squirrel corn.

I know that a little later they'll seek out the dying elms and wood edges that give rise to morels, the tastiest of mushrooms. Come summer they'll tend their mortgage lifters, big as your head. I know they filled their freezers with venison last fall. I know my grandfather will still make his cornbread and pintos every time I visit, and black walnut cake from the tree out back if I'm lucky. And I know it will all taste of the place it came from, like a piece of our past made real, made part of our bodies. It will taste like home.

If Mr. Oliver could get that on the air, then there's a food revolution I'd like to see.

But maybe I just have a bit of a chip on my Appalachian shoulder. I watch the 30 minute preview of his show with my wife and we share a look of surprised relief. It might not be as bad as we'd feared. In fact, it might be that Mr. Oliver's medium is just right for this message. Let's face it, how many people in my hometown are reading Michael Pollan, or seeing docs like Food Inc.? (Well, OK, a few. Heck, Morgan Spurlock, of Supersize Me is a fellow West Virginia native.)

But highbrow foodie books and films don't often reach the broader (hah) audience that needs the message. Food Revolution just might. It could be that Mr. Oliver's found a higher purpose for this low and often loathsome form of entertainment.

You can watch the two-hour premiere tonight on ABC. Here's a promo:

[ScottThuy 140]

I really got a kick out of the "lunch ladies" at the elementary school and the attudude about knives... OMG children with knives... they were great examples of fitness and eating right were they not? when he unloaded that dump truck full of fat to show how much fat the school kids consume in a year, they showed a bunch of the parents... huge parents... the kids don't have a chance as it is unless someone steps in to fight for them and thank god that Brit is there fighting for them... At the end one of the two issues that the lady from the school board had was the cost... as you noted these people are poor and bad food is so much cheaper...

[luckytxn 2,265]

Don't agree it is cheaper. It is easier and faster to throw something in the over and set a timer or the microwave. The same amount of that bad food costs can be done by buying food that needs to be prepared and cooked. In fact it can be cheaper because usually there is enough when I cook or my wife to have leftovers to eat for lunch the next day.

[Peikko 1,575]

That's the point, it's not cheaper, but someone is getting richer by making school kids fat. Nice.