Jamie Oliver’s food revolution victory with Los Angeles Unified School District sets a national example

From  Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution is transforming the food security scene in Los Angeles and by extension the rest of the nation and the world.

Tuesday June 14, 2011, the Los Angeles Unified School District Board voted in favor of eliminating flavored milk from the city’s public schools. This school food policy goes into effect July 1 to improve the nutrition of the 680,000 students in the second largest school district in the nation. LA students will be drinking real unflavored milk with their meals from now on.

This change is in response to Jamie’s Food Revolution efforts that currently have LA in the spotlight and his Milk Day of Action campaign that inspired food revolutionaries across the nation to demand only fresh wholesome food for schools, starting with real milk.

In Jamie Oliver’s TED award speech given February 2010 in Long Beach, California, Jamie highlighted flavored milks in schools as an issue “epitomizing the trouble that we’re in." He said,

“School food is something that most kids, 31 million a day actually, have twice a day, more than often, breakfast and lunch, 190 days of the year, so you could say that school food is quite important,really, judging the circumstances."

After dumping a wheelbarrow of sugar, the amount consumed by a single child during 5 years of elementary school, just from milk, Jamie said,

“Judging the circumstances, any judge in the whole  world would look at the statistics and the evidence and they would find any government involved guilty of child abuse, that’s my belief.”

In response to his recent LAUSD victory, Jamie said,

“With flavored milk, kids are getting loads of sugar and other food additives they simply don’t need to grow and learn. In the Food Revolution the little battles set us up for the next win. All these little battles count; they matter. It’s not just milk. It’s caring about what we feed kids 180 days a year.”

Perhaps your school district did not get on the Milk Day bandwagon this year. That’s OK. You can use your summer away from school to organize your school food policy campaign. It’s never too late to make our schools accountable for the good or bad food choices they offer our children.

More Information


Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution milk factsheet

Jamie Oliver Foundation website

Join the Food Revolution Community on facebook

Watch Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, season 2, Fridays at 9PM/8C on ABC. This Friday’s episode is “Feed them healthy food with 77 cents,” June 17, 2011.

Books by Jamie Oliver


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You might also be interested in Donna’s other work as National Food Security Examiner, Long Beach Urban Agriculture Examiner, Long Beach Restaurant Examiner, National Science News Examiner and founder and executive director of Long Beach Grows.

Copyright © 2011 Donna Marykwas; All rights reserved.