Jamie Oliver expanding fight against childhood obesity

British chef Jamie Oliver has spent the last several months working with kids to improve their choices with regard to nutrition, documenting his progress on ABC's Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. Now he's won a $100,000 TED grant to combat childhood obesity, and his plan sounds like a good one...

By Laura Shunk

August 4, 2010

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British chef Jamie Oliver has spent the last several months working with kids to improve their choices with regard to nutrition, documenting his progress on ABC's Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution.

Now he's won a $100,000 TED grant to combat childhood obesity, and his plan sounds like a good one.

Oliver is using a hands-on approach to tackle the problem, first by building community kitchens to educate kids. But he's also creating an anti-obesity online community that will give kids and their parents resources to make better choices when it comes to deciding what to eat. And he'll expand from there, into a fleet of food theater trucks -- traveling nutrition shows geared toward kids.

He's not going to do all of that out of the grant money, though. He'll use the grant to start the initial organization, which will continue to fund itself off of profits from a line of healthy foods.

Oliver is also asking the public for input, via this video.

Jamie Oliver Introduces the OpenIDEO Challenge / OpenIDEO.com from IDEO on Vimeo.

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Laura Shunk was Westword's restaurant critic from 2010 to 2012; she's also been food editor at the Village Voice and a dining columnist in Beijing. Her toughest assignment had her drinking ten martinis and eating ten Caesar salads over the course of 48 hours. She still drinks martinis, but remains lukewarm on Caesar salads.

Contact: Laura Shunk

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