Categories: Food Diet Nutrition

Chef Jamie Oliver Has Made Some Serious Enemies

Jamie Oliver has a shocking track record of making people very, very angry, and often the anger is for good reason. You know, like the time some of his unfounded comments cost hundreds of jobs? These are the times Jamie Oliver made more enemies than friends.

Jamie Oliver started his Food Revolution show with the best of intentions: go into school districts and help them feed kids right. Everyone can agree that’s a noble goal. But when he headed to Huntington, West Virginia in 2009, well, they weren’t exactly happy to see him

It was just after the city had been named the unhealthiest in the country, and no one really wanted him putting them under the spotlight. There was more to the differences than just that, though. It turned out that locals just didn’t want some outsider coming in and berating them into eating healthy… especially in a manner that was less than understanding.

Oliver’s comments succeeded in getting some serious hate thrown Huntington’s way. The school’s food service director, Rhonda McCoy, was bombarded with hate mail, and everyone was calling for her resignation. But here’s the thing: after Oliver swept through and made his changes, the school was worse off. A whopping 77 percent of students didn’t like or eat lunch anymore, and many were throwing it away. That’s a huge problem, because Huntington was town devastated by a collapse in their manufacturing sector that relied on school lunches to feed their kids. With no one buying lunches, staff started to get laid off. Oh, and the food didn’t even meet the US Department of Agriculture’s standards because it was too high in fat.

The punchline? By 2017, McCoy had ditched Oliver’s changes, revamped the school menu herself, and made it a healthy one that kids would actually eat.

Watch the video to see how Chef Jamie Oliver has made some serious enemies.

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