Fat chance

CHEF Jamie Oliver has had remarkable success at tackling the state of British school dinners and home cooking in his TV series. Now, after a brief interlude trying to improve the British educational system with Jamie’s Dream School, he’s back in the kitchen for his new series.

But in the second series of his US food revolution, he’s hardly welcomed with open arms by the Americans.

Last year he travelled to America’s unhealthiest city – Huntington, West Virginia – to get to grips with America’s junk food addiction. The result was the Emmy Award-winning Food Revolution series and the start of his campaign across the US.

This time he’s aiming to tackle the eating habits of Los Angeles, a town of 11 million where “it’s easier to get a gun, crack or a prostitute in a lot of areas of (this city) before you can get a tomato”.

Diet-related problems such as obesity, heart disease and diabetes mean that America’s children could be the first generation to live shorter lives than their parents.

So Oliver takes it upon himself to change how America feeds itself at home, in schools and eating out.

Things don’t start well. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) authority, which is responsible for 650,000 school meals a day in the LA area, refuses to let the him film in their canteens.

Perhaps they fear he’s brought over a suitcase full of turkey twizzlers.

Oliver decides to try to win over parents and teachers in the hope of persuading the authority to change its mind. At least one outraged parent is disgusted that her child is offered “nothing fresh” at school, only processed foods.

He opens a kitchen in affluent Westwood, where he hopes to teach people the skills they need to combat the obesity epidemic.

But he’s confronted with the scale of the problem at a school lunch convention, when he discovers a seminar advocating flavoured (and sugar-laden) milk be served.

He stages a dramatic demonstration, filling a school bus with the 57 tonnes of sugar which the children of the LAUSD area consume every week – purely from their intake of flavoured milk.

But again it falls short with the local community. Could his food revolution doomed before it’s even got started?

ROLLING hills, stunning greenery and a stillness that you would struggle to replicate or find anywhere else – some would say that nowhere else in the world has stunning countryside views quite like Britain.

The documentary Green And Pleasant Land looks at the depiction of the British landscape in art. It’s a subject that has typified English artwork since back in the 18th century.

Here, various artists, critics and academics will be casting their keen eyes over some of the very best portrayals of our landscapes, as the programme charts the genre’s development from the earliest Flemish paintings in the court of Charles I, right through to David Hockney’s digital drawings.

The programme also features contributions by film-maker Nic Roeg, historian Dan Snow and novelist Will Self.

THE search for new products continues in Britain’s Next Big Thing, with Dragons Den millionaire Theo Paphitis helping would-be entrepreneur dip their toes into the world of big business.

This week the pound signs can be seen shining in his eyes when he believes he may have just found a product with the potential to make billions of pounds.

In the penultimate episode of an agreeable, if hardly outstanding series, there’s a mixed bag as some inventors seem to be well on their way up the ladder of success to the big time, while for others, it seems they may have to stay put in their day job a little longer.

Liberty buyer Michelle Alger appears to be losing her patience with the young designers, while Show and Tell’s light project narrowly avoids making a costly mistake, Boots push Birgitte’s pram shade to the limits and Stuart Jolley’s male deodorant wipe undergoes a makeover.