Has Jamie Oliver sold his soul?

[ABaconAndOnionTart]

Okay, I know this has been done to death but, Jamie Oliver advocates higher welfare meat, and yet is cooking chicken wings in his budget programme. Can't remember seeing free range or organic wings for sale unless attached to the bird! aibu thinking his message is forget the morals to save money?

[Darkesteyes]

mignon

[ItIsKnown]

mignonette the supermarket displays which I used to tip over and blame my DS for are now gone so hiding is the way to go.

Are you reading, Jamie?

We on MN think you are a patronising arrogant twat. We are your target demographic but we are appalled at your attitudes. Stop judging poor people, have some fucking compassion and try to be less of a cunt.

I bought every one of your books except your recent one which I am boycotting. I am sure that I am not alone in this. You have fucked up massively with your recent comments but then you can afford to. You have also upset a lot of people with your ill-informed judgements.

Luckily for you, you are rich enough to not give a shit, but your faux-altruistic cheeky chappy persona has taken a serious battering.

Lots of love from IIK.

[Snazzyenjoyingsummer]

Link mignon? I could research it I'm sure but... it's late...

While I was not impressed by JO's prog tonight, I'm not starting to feel it's all gone a bit OTT here. 'Out of touch' , yes, but 'utterly loathsome'? Really? Just for comparison, Anthony Worrall Thompson has also done the launching his own range of cookware etc, but also said that the minimum wage should be scrapped and waiting staff made to work for tips only as then you'd get better service (while having a moan about East Europeans in the process). Then he was revealed as a shoplifter. That's a lot further along the loathsome scale than JO for me.

[Darkesteyes]

Really snazzy Id say it was about even. JO has had a go at loads of groups of people Young ppl, poor ppl, British workers.

Hey we only need a third chef to come out with some bollocks and we have got the hat trick.

[BoffinMum]

There is a chef in Cambridge who teaches at the local FE college, and also is head chef of one of the colleges, who is a complete legend on the training front. He trains people who won't work in expensive restaurants for the benefit of the top 10%, but who will go out across East Anglia populating catering jobs in all sorts of places - schools, hospitals, canteens, cafes and so on - the backbone of the catering industry. He's probably been responsible for training many more chefs than JO has, over the course of his long career, and he is just one example of people who work away quietly, with excellent results, in contrast to the noisy and comparatively niche approach of JO.

I like quiet, me, and I like what the Spanish chefs have been doing. And while we are at it, I think Ferrera's book 'The Family Meal' is a lot better than JO's book, and the ingredients are cheaper.

[Eilidhbelle]

He donated a copy of the book to every library in Britain, so it is available for free to anyone who would want it.

But I hate the programme. I'd love to see real costings for every meal, because I can't believe that it includes 'store cupboard essentials' as part of the final cost.

[whois]

Ah you lot, he's not so bad. He has actually tried to make a difference, and he highlighted how crap school meals were and pushed for change. If you don't like him, don't watch him!

I don't think his new TV series is aimed at those actually on the breadline, more aimed at showing how you can cook good quality and tasty food for less. I think £3.40 per portion for pork shoulder is really good.

[Bakingnovice]

He's a millionaire mockney. Hoping to make another few million with his latest con. Our school dinner uptake has dropped 50% since his campaign. We have lost dinner staff, some of whom who had been cooking healthy dinners there for years. One if the main reasons the intake dropped was the food had to be delivered by an external company so the LEA could monitor salt/sugar etc. school dinners now has a packed lunch element, and no seasoning in the meals. It's disgusting. Prior to this we never had turkey twizzlers on the menu, we had generally good hearty home cooking. . Is it any wonder more kids are having packed lunch?! Just wanted to burst the JO myth that he revolutionised school dinners.

[JustBecauseICan]

The thing that gets me most, and I've said it under many MN names on many JO threads is his seeming manipulation of the truth.

I am still waiting for an answer from "his people" about a blatant untruth I spotted on his Italian school dinners programme. Which he used v skilfully to diss the UK school dinners.

I also have an issue with his school dinner thing- it's all very well to slag the system and what the kids were being fed (if it was all true) But what about the parents? Did millions of parents not give a shit about what their kids were eating at school until Saint Jamie told them to? Or is the truth slightly more mundane. That they weren't, by and large, that bad?

[JustBecauseICan]

I also find the fact that we are supposed to consider Jules a "celebrity" mind-blowingly patronising. Why the fuck should we? Does the woman have a discernible talent we can admire? Of her own?

We don't see Mr JK Rowling touted around "ooooh, Mr Rowling would love to do Strictly" do we?

He gives me the rage. (not Mr JK, obviously, I don't even know his name)

[BoffinMum]

Justbecause, I too have a big problem with the coattails aspect of his family life. He thinks he is the Bob Geldof of food, and in no time at all we'll have his kids preaching to us as well, about what to cook and what to dress in and the like, whilst trousering the dosh.

I agree about the school meals thing. Round our way they haven't changed, just a bit more expensive and a bit more cheap pasta on the menu (which I don't approve of FWIW).

[LapsedPacifist]

JO just doesn't seem to be the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to understanding why folk who are less fortunate than him make the choices they do. It's like the 'School Dinners' debacle, where he claimed parents were taking burgers to give to children through the school railings because they 'didn't like' his healthy school dinners.

This turned out to be bollocks. Parents were taking all sorts of food to the school, not just burgers, but sandwiches, wraps, fruit etc as well, because their children weren't getting fed. They weren't rejecting the food - a new system in the school canteen meant some kids were queing all lunchbreak and then finding the food had RUN OUT. And the situation was only temporary.

We watched the 'Ministry of Food' series and it was glaringly obvious there was a bloody great elephant in the room. At no point did JO engage with the issue of budgeting. It's all very well demonstrating quick and easy recipes to people without cooking skills or experience, but how much exactly does he think pancetta costs? Why not use chopped up bacon instead?

What was desperately needed on that programme was to take the weekly food budget for each family as a starting point and work out menus from there - before demonstrating any recipes. People on very limited income cannot afford to waste ingredients and this is always a risk when introuducing unfamiliar recipes to children. He pointed out that a single mum was spending a lot of money every week on takeaways but he needed to show her just how much food could be cooked from scratch ON THE SAME BUDGET.

[SeaSickSal]

He has a pile of shrivelled sun dried tomatos where his soul should be.

[JustBecauseICan]

I think it says a lot that all his preachy programmes are Channel 4.

Shock docs carefully cherry picked to hide the truth.

[Darkesteyes]

Whois like ive said previously if his programmes arent aimed at ppl on the breadline then why was/is he being so vindictive towards them then?

[YouTheCat]

He's made no difference to our school meals. They are still processed shite (just without the turkey twizzlers).

And all that 'look at all this crap in chicken nuggets' rubbish. There is just as much crap in most average priced sausages and not so very long ago every bit of the animal would have been used in some way. The ex mil remembers eating 'lights' in the 40s.

[fatlazymummy]

To me Jamie Oliver's food is dinner party food. It's great for special occasions but it's not really achievable on a low budget on a day to day basis. Blogs such as A girl called Jack are far more useful for anyone who really needs to save money.
I also find the insinuation that no British people know how to cook rather irritating. We do, we just don't use 50 ingredients and a gallon of olive oil for every recipe.

[Charliefarlie1192]

I can not bear to watch his flobbery mouth on my screen

[sonlypuppyfat]

hairy has made my day, thank you

[JustBecauseICan]

fatlazymummy- I agree. It's partly his dissing of everything British (unless it's hand reared massaged daily organic beetroot or summat) that irritates so very much.

And I speak as someone who has lived in Italy for the last 20 years. Where believe me, bad cooks, and very very bad food exist, contrary to what JO would have us believe. I have never had such poor quality meat (which costs 3 times what it would cost in the UK) in my life.

[BoffinMum]

Lapsed, I didn't know that. The TV company really spun that negatively, if that is true. I did wonder at the time why someone would go out to get a burger and then go all the way down to school with it to deliver it to a DC. It makes a lot more sense if kids are ringing home asking for mum to drop off a quick pack up.

[ubik]

I've just seen Jools coming out of Farmfoods with a packet of cheese strings and munchy box

[Mopswerver]

God! All this hatred for JO! I wouldn't call myself his greatest fan cooking wise but he always seems like a decent human being to me. You can mock him all you want for being rich but he is one of the few celebs that I think has earned it. He could easily sit back and take as much as he can but he has at least tried to 'give back'. Why do people have so much bile for people like him? Richard Branson gets it in the neck too. Save it all for the likes of Jeremy Clarkson et al. Jamie is a good guy. (Dons hard hat).

[BoffinMum]

We dislike him climbing on the backs of the impoverished to further his career, as this is contributing to their apparent vilification.

[YouTheCat]

Mop, did you actually read what he said about 'the poor'?

He doesn't give a shit. It's all just part of the huge publicity wheel that is out to make him money.