Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution: 1,000 People Cooking

More adversity in Huntington, WV for our poor chef Jamie Oliver this week! He makes a bet with crusty DJ Rod from the Dawg 93.7 radio station that he can get 1,000 people to cook in one week. The DJ is VERY confident that Jamie is going to fail. I'm confident that Rod and lunch lady Alice are married.

Jamie's first step: make a flash mob. Of course, that's everyone's first inclination when they need to solve a bet. Where to find a group of people that like to make a huge stir, be on television, and dig foreign guys? Marshall University. We the help of a choreographer and a tasty wok recipe, Jamie and a group of college students decide to put together a routine to get the citizens of Huntington fired up.

Very toe tapping and catchy! I love the girl who is grooving out and then realizes all the people around her are apart of the scene. It's this sense of fun and whimsy that seems to catch on, and Jamie's Kitchen is soon visited by eager participants that want Rod the DAWG to lose his bet.

The show closes off the streets around Jamie's Kitchen and hosts a cook off. All sorts of folks show up to cook and get their photo taken for Jamie's 1,000 people cooking board. We even have visits from the obese family that Jamie is helping, Pastor Steve, and some of his high school cooking group. Then Rod the DAWG shows up. He is not cooking. But he is surprised that people were actually interested and excited to be apart of the effort.

The most exciting part? Alice the lunch lady shows up with a bunch of other people from the elementary school to learn to cook. Is she softening up? Maybe I'll have to retract my bitchy comment from last post.

Jamie very wisely realizes that he needs all naysayers on his side to make a real difference, so he invites Rod to meet him for an intervention of sorts. At the local mortuary we are shown the darker side of the food revolution. Because Americans are dieing of obesity related causes, the mortician's are having to order coffins that are the size of queen size beds. They have to use a truck to transport the coffin to the cemetery because the casket won't fit in a hearse. The plus size casket won't fit in a traditional plot, so people are having to purchase two plots like airline seats. Even cremation is more difficult- the larger people have so much fat that they burn more slowly, like a candle. Creepy thoughts that I have never even thought about! Rod seems truly shocked.

Then Jamie takes him to the Kitchen to talk to the people that Jamie has already touched. The high school girl who's father died after he had gastric bypass surgery, the plus size teen who has liver issues and has been given 5 to 7 more years to live, the mom who made her kids donuts for breakfast and now the kid is showing symptoms of diabetes. Rod tears up after hearing their stories, and realizes that his crass comments about Jamie and his revolution weren't helpful. If anything, they were harmful.

Rod turns it around! The next morning they do their radio show at Jamie's Kitchen, and Rod is actually the 1,000 person to cook with Jamie. I really thought that Rod was going to be an adversary the entire season. I'm glad that he turned it around. Really, if he can get Rod to see the light, maybe Alice will follow suit. But the clip from next week shows she is still causing trouble. . .I'll keep watching to see.