Jamie Oliver's Fantastic TED Talk

I don't much like Jamie Oliver but the man is right when it comes to food and just how much it affects not only our health but our entire society. Poor eating habits have led to incredible costs of healthcare, which uses more taxes, it has led to shocking amounts of food wastage and poor diet has been linked to decreased cognitive function. This is only a small sample of the problems with eating badly.

I invite everyone here to watch this video from TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) where Mr.Oliver exposes some of the obvious but shocking truths behind diet, including how news agencies scare us all with fear of homicide when far more people are dying from eating junk.

www.ted.com...

If you haven't seen TED before then you should surf around the site as there are many incredible talks, from the most advanced touch screens, medicines and arcitecture to some incredible musical talent.

So many families now just don't care what they eat and we're seeing thousands of people dying needlessly and costing tax payers a fortune. Even if you use private healthcare for your entire society you as a tax payer will still be hurt because obese people are more likely to take days off work, which has a knock on effect to you. If you have insurance, well obese people need it as well and the insurance companies pass on the costs to you. We can't escape the effects that having an obese population has.

Like Mr. Oliver says, the fast food companies have weaned us off the good foods and onto the bad. Anyone who knows the history of the fast food companies starting around 1970 where they really started to aggressively target children knows how bad this has gotten.

It's a 20 minute video, but completely worth watching.

reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984


Jamie Oliver also did a television series on the junk foods provided to children via the school canteen... and how it affects their health, attention spans and cognitive abilities. It's rather frightening.

People on this site are up in arms over things like fluoride while they are probably munching down some potato chips at the very same time. It's ironic. Bad nutrition is more likely to make a population easier to rule over by the PTB than anything that could be achieved via fluoride, yet we hear so little about it on this site. People are literally eating themselves into morons.

IRM

Originally posted by InfaRedMan
Jamie Oliver also did a television series on the junk foods provided to children via the school canteen... and how it affects their health, attention spans and cognitive abilities. It's rather frightening.

In the above video he talks about school food and shows a group of children who can't identify vegetables or fruits. Pretty sad.

Originally posted by InfaRedMan
People on this site are up in arms over things like fluoride while they are probably munching down some potato chips at the very same time. It's ironic. Bad nutrition is more likely to make a population easier to rule over by the PTB than anything that could be achieved via fluoride, yet we hear so little about it on this site. People are literally eating themselves into morons.

IRM

Very well said. So many threads about flouride and genetically altered food and yet the same people probably spend most of their week in and out of fast food places! Oh and studies have shown that a person with fat friends is more likely to get fat themselves because of group dynamics.

People just don't pay attention as to what they are shovelling into their mouths. Forget for a moment how eating healthily can make your life longer and make you feel better. Consider only how being obese damages society as a whole, tax costs, private health costs, environmental impact, even the financial cost of buying junnk food compared to healthy food, it's all obvious and yet it's something we pay the least attention to.

With all the talk of conspiracies on this website i think this is one of the most overlooked. I'm not saying we are being encouraged to get fat so that we become apathetic. Only that it is in the interest of very powerful food corporations that we get fat so that we eat more and they get richer. As someone who grew up in the 80's and early 90's i can see a very clear difference between the tv i watched as a kid and the modern stuff. The product placement and marketing techniques are very different.

Kids have no chance against the vast torrent of advertising and pressure and their parents seem to either be trapped as well or just don't care.

[edit on 11-2-2010 by ImaginaryReality1984]

I like Jamie he has a lot of good knowledge about food.


thanks for sharing ill check this out tonight S&F!

Originally posted by ImaginaryReality1984
As someone who grew up in the 80's and early 90's i can see a very clear difference between the tv i watched as a kid and the modern stuff. The product placement and marketing techniques are very different.

Kids have no chance against the vast torrent of advertising and pressure and their parents seem to either be trapped as well or just don't care.

I completely agree on your points. I went to Primary School in the 70's. Our school consisted of maybe two obese kids, maybe one mildly autistic child and only one diabetic. Around my 6th year, Mc Donalds introduced itself to Australia and led the way for all the other fast food companies.

The Marketing of Mc Donalds is squarely aimed at children with their figurehead being that of a clown. The message: "Eating Mc Donalds is fun". Clearly it was not a message of nutrition. All of a sudden children's parties went from being those held in a backyard with lots of wholesome home made foods to ones being held in a Pirate Ship at Micky D's. Off course, every other child then held birthday parties there to 'fit in' with the crowd.

When I was growing up, my parents grew many vegetables and fruit trees in their back yard. They would engage us in the planting and growing which gave us a good respect and knowledge of good foods. We invested emotionally in the well being of the plant and would follow it through it's various stages of growth until fruition. It was fascinating!

If we were playing outside and felt hungry, we would often pick a tomato or a nectarine or plum off the tree. Kids just don't appear to be doing that these days, especially those in the urban sprawl.

Education of healthy foods starts in the home and should NOT be left up to the devices of television. It is a sad state of affairs for children these days.

I'm sure there are many other things that factor into bad nutrition such as both parents working with little time/energy at the end of the day to prepare decent home made, healthy dinners. In short, the destruction of the old family model where mum would have all day to whip up healthy home made foods is over... and pre-packaged, preservative laden foods are in vogue.

One day we will look back upon the corporate hijacking of our nutrition and shudder at what the world did to their children. I hope that day comes sooner than later.

IRM

Originally posted by InfaRedMan
When I was growing up, my parents grew many vegetables and fruit trees in their back yard. They would engage us in the planting and growing which gave us a good respect and knowledge of good foods. We invested emotionally in the well being of the plant and would follow it through it's various stages of growth until fruition. It was fascinating!

If we were playing outside and felt hungry, we would often pick a tomato or a nectarine or plum off the tree. Kids just don't appear to be doing that these days, especially those in the urban sprawl.

Well we didn't have land with our house but we had a plot of land we rented to grow stuff. It was great! Today people have been indoctrinated by supermarkets to think that carrots are all perfectly straight, that they don't come covered in dirt and knobbly bits and that if an apple has a small pinhead sized blackspot it's no good! It's disgusting how much food is thrown out by supermarkets.

Originally posted by InfaRedMan
Education of healthy foods starts in the home and should NOT be left up to the devices of television. It is a sad state of affairs for children these days.

Yet the parents blame the governments, funny isn't it.

Originally posted by InfaRedMan
I'm sure there are many other things that factor into bad nutrition such as both parents working with little time/energy at the end of the day to prepare decent home made, healthy dinners. In short, the destruction of the old family model where mum would have all day to whip up healthy home made foods is over... and pre-packaged, preservative laden foods are in vogue.

This is an absolute cop out, an excuse that so many people make. Lots of parents come home tired and cook for their children, others decide not to take 10 or 15 minutes to cook and sit in front of the tv for a couple of hours.

As for destruction of the family unit, well lets forget single parents for the moment and talk about married couples. Maybe if they stopped trying to have the latest gadgets, the biggest TV, the largest house they can afford and stopped living paycheck to paycheck then one of them could work part time and look after the children.

EDIT

I just realised that sounded a little rude with the cop out comment, it wasn't directed at you IRM, just the people who use that as an excuse

[edit on 12-2-2010 by ImaginaryReality1984]

reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984


LOL.. no need to explain. I knew exactly what you meant, and I agree about your comment on all the latest gadgets etc. IMHO, once you have kids, their welfare becomes the most important thing in your life. It's all about sacrifice and compromise for the childs benefit.

I'm going through all of this at the moment. lol!

IRM

Thanks for sharing.

It's been a while since I've been back to TED.
I enjoy a lot of what plays there - and a lot of it I kick to the can - but this talk you're speaking of sounds like it's right up my alley.

Thanks for the reminder.
peace

Originally posted by InfaRedMan
ic. Bad nutrition is more likely to make a population easier to rule over by the PTB than anything that could be achieved via fluoride, yet we hear so little about it on this site. People are literally eating themselves into morons.

I agree with this. They brainwash a lot of people with wrong nutrition advice tho, mainly the whole food pyramid and saturated fat propaganda.

What would be the best way to keep people sick, lazy and dumb? Tell them carbs are the best energy source and that saturated fat(the actual best energy source) will kill you. I've been doing research on Short chain fatty acids, a product present abundatly in fermented foods and its actually pretty crazy how beneficial they are. Its kinda amazing to think so many of our modern days products used to be fermented(bread, ketchup, mustard, dairy products, grains, meats etc.) but now are just a shell of there former existence.

I urge anyone interested in health and well being educate yourself about this whole saturated fat, short chain fatty acid stuff.