Jamie Oliver is a sanctimonious fvck

[forthwritten]

I am interested in food (in another life, I think I'd want to be an anthropologist or historian of food) and have written about how I'd eat cheaply.

As such, I find Jamie Oliver's comments on chips, cheese, giant TVs and modern day poverty profoundly misguided. While I've fed myself for well under a fiver in a week (God bless Co-op's 20p turnips), cheesy chips are totally understandable when you're tired and hungry and just want something hot and greasy to put in your mouth. Cheesy chips are understandable when you've been on your feet all day and are too bone-deep exhausted to prepare food, cook and wash up. Cheesy chips are understandable when you don't have cooking facilities beyond a microwave. Cheesy chips are understandable when your time has been someone else's all day and now, when you can snatch a couple of hours between work and sleep that are your own, you don't want to use it cooking. Cheesy chips are understandable when your body doesn't let you hold a knife without hurting your hands or lift heavy dishes or stand up over a hob.

Here are some excellent critiques:
Lib Com: Guilt, choice, and responsibility in the austerity kitchen
A Girl Called Jack: Save with Jamie: Get rid of the ‘massive f***ing TV’ and ‘shop at markets’ instead… (see also 'Austerity cooking' has been hijacked by the moralisers)
North South Food: Dear Jamie Oliver...

The last is a particularly good roundup of all the things that make it hard for people to cook: food deserts, shop opening times, long working hours, disability issues, the lack of savings, high utility bills... Particularly damning is Jamie Oliver's own influence in this:

One of the biggest reasons we can’t all live the life of a Sicilian peasant with our handful of mussels and darling little pasta dishes is that our shopping options have been decimated by the supermarkets which now account for about 90% of food shopping in the UK. This would include the supermarket chain that you advertised for 10 years. And the other five or six that stock your ready made pasta sauces and branded foods.

I am also enjoying twitter's response on the #AskJamieOliver hashtag.

Comments

[trouble]

Sweet ice cream on a pogo stick, I hate Jamie Oliver.

[silverhare]

I remember that week I had £10 for food for two people, and we ate chip butties every evening because two loaves of bread and two bags of chips was the best option for two exhausted, mentally ill folk. Especially while writing my dissertation and working two jobs.

Jamie Oliver can SOD OFF.