Jamie Oliver
My favourite healthy recipes for all the family
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW AND RECIPES IN life
ICOULD retire,’ says Jamie Oliver with a weary smile. ‘Oh, I think about it every day.’ We’re used to seeing the celebrity chef as a cheerful chap with boundless energy but he has had a hard time lately, with part of his business empire coming to the brink of collapse and restaurants having to close. ‘The past six months have been tough, in all sorts of ways,’ he agrees.
But he’s said to be worth £240 million, so why not pack it all in and sail away on a permanent holiday with wife Jools and their children Poppy, 16, Daisy, 15, Petal, nine, Buddy, seven and one-year-old River?
‘It would be really easy to do that. My life would be a lot easier and nicer,’ says Oliver, 42, when we meet at the trendy headquarters of his empire in North London. He’s dressed in the usual trainers, jeans, white T-shirt and checked shirt, but seems tired. ‘Having an opinion and caring is really bumpy in Britain.’
That’s the thing with Jamie Oliver: he doesn’t just want to sell you a plate of food (and the plate, and a TV show), he wants to change the world, or at least the way we eat.
After Fifteen ( the restaurant chain staffed by people from disadvantaged backgrounds) and the high- profile effort to i mprove school dinners, he’s coming back with a new 11-point manifesto (see above, right) covering everything from food labelling to GP training, better catering for hospital workers and properly banning the sale of energy drinks to under-16s.
‘I feel that it’s the right thing to do. The only tools I have are the trust people have in me, and time. So that’s what I tell myself. “Don’t lie, and just f****** don’t go away.” ’
We’re going to talk about all of t hi s , i n a r emarkably honest encounter in which he will discuss his business troubles for the first time and admit what went wrong.
He’ll also confess that although he wants to ban McDonald’s from advertising Big Macs to children, he would let his own kids go there.
‘ Every industry has its crack, right?’ He means the thing it is addicted to. ‘The food industry’s crack has been salt, sugar and fat.’
But some of his own recipes have a lot of sugar in them and I’ll challenge him on that – as well as asking why he feels he has the right to tell people what to do. Because in the midst of all his own problems, Oliver is putting pressure on the Government to deliver a proper strategy to beat childhood obesity.
Theresa May published one last summer that had none of the restrictions on junk food advertising and promotion that Oliver had said would be most effective.
The one thing he did like in it was the sugar tax he had pushed for, which has just come into effect. But how will making a bottle of Coke more expensive change anything?
‘All the money [raised] is going to breakfast clubs and sports in schools. That’s the thing that makes people go, “Oh well tax for good, a bit like a donation, yes I’m happy to do that.” And it’s so much more than a tax. It’s a message to the industry: “Guys, we’re watching you.” It’s the first time the Government has stood up and said, “Soft drinks are the single largest source of sugar. Forty years ago you were a luxury, now people use you as everyday hydration. You’re a problem.”
‘Similar taxes are applied to petrol, to gambling, to smoking. I don’t think it’s any different. The reason for the tax on gambling is really clear: if you gamble a lot, if it gets out of control, the Government needs tax and resources because the kids go hungry and partners normally get abuse, there’s a pattern, you know?
‘Ultimately it is right for the state to incentivise people to turn a tap on and drink water more than open a can of sugary drink.’
Oliver is lobbying for more influence over a second go at the obesity strategy, which he expects the Prime Minister to announce by the summer. In the meantime, he is launching a social media campaign to extend the ban on advertisements for junk food and drink on
SUGAR, FAT AND SALT… THEY’RE THE FOOD INDUSTRY’S CRACK
TV to after the 9pm watershed – as well as restricting what children can see online or on billboards at stadiums and schools.
‘When do kids and teenagers actually watch telly? It’s the major TV shows after 6pm, things like X Factor when often there’ll be 11 junk food ads in the breaks. So if you observe that the target isn’t where you thought it was, then you simply extend it.’ What kind of ads is he talking about?
‘Everything from Coke to McDonald’s. Domino’s. All the sweet manufacturers. There’s a long list. It’s not saying, “Coke – you can’t advertise”. It’s saying, “You can’t advertise red [original] Coke. You should really be advertising Coke Zero.” It tastes pretty similar. I can’t taste the difference. So it’s not a total bear trap.’
This all gets crunched down to ‘Jamie says we can’t have a Coke or a Big Mac’, doesn’t it? ‘ No, I’ve never said that. I’m asking, is it appropriate t o advertise food that is high in salt, fat and sugar to children at prime time when obesity is crippling the NHS?
‘If you compare all this to smoking companies, they can’t advertise in the breaks on X Factor. We’ve changed smoking from being normal to not normal. You’re seeing cancer rates drop. Diet-related diseases are doing the opposite.’
So is sugar the new smoking? ‘There are so many similarities.’
Does he enforce any of this at home? Jamie and Jools live in an £8.9 million Hampstead mansion with their children. At 16 and 15 Poppy and Daisy are at the age when girls stop listening to Daddy. What if one of them says: ‘I’m off to McDonald’s with my mates?’
Oliver sighs. ‘Honestly? If they wanted to go, I’d let them. Because they get really well fed 95 per cent of the time from us. If they want to go out and have a fizzy drink I don’t care, because we have none in the house. My wife’s probably stricter. She’d say, “Oh please, don’t.” But they’d only end up doing it in some other place.’
So that’s news: having campaigned against the company – and arguably shamed it into abandoning the use of ammonia-drenched ‘pink slime’ beef filler in America – Jamie would let his children go to McDonald’s.
‘I think going out and having fun is great. I don’t think they would, I don’t think Jools would, but for me as a parent, because I know they get really well looked after at home, I wouldn’t tell them not to. I don’t want to alienate them from having a burger or having a pizza.’
Come down too hard and they’ll be sneaking around to a mate’s house to guzzle a litre of Coke, won’t they? ‘Yeah.’ Don’t do that every day and eat healthy the rest of the time, is what he’s saying. Trouble is, he says, deceitful food companies don’t make that easy.
‘A chocolate bar or a burger is quite honest. It has never lied to you. But there’s a serious problem when you’re buying a loaf of bread with packaging that implies it’s healthy but there’s loads of s*** in it; or when the cereal aisle is full of sugar; or when BOGOF [buy one, get one free] deals in supermarkets are promoting such a load of s***e, they’re not helping people whether they’re poor or rich.’ Cereals really wind him up. ‘Calling it the cereal aisle or the breakfast aisle in a supermarket is almost like [a violation of the] trade and descriptions act really, because it should be called the cake aisle.’
Yes, but what about his own food? The Amazing Date Shake among the ‘fruit recipes’ on his website has more sugar than a can of red Coke. Do people challenge him on that? ‘Yeah, that happens quite a lot.’
So what’s his answer? ‘I get what you’re saying. I do cooking shows where I make a pavlova, or I’ll do a cheesecake. This is the joy of food, for sure. But if you analyse a hundred things I do, there is a pattern. What I’m trying to say is that if you help people get it right most of the time there’s plenty of space to get it wrong. And one should love both.’
This is tricky, but is he ratcheting up the campaigning now to distract us all from his business troubles?
‘I haven’t ratcheted it up. We’re just trying to be more organised and collaborate more. But the business has never been better. It’s never been more profitable, never been a happier, more productive place to work. The media group. That’s where you’re sitting now.’
He’s talking about the company that runs all his media content online, in books, magazines and on television. Other companies handle Jamie Oliver products, overseas properties and restaurants.
He owns them all, but they each have separate management – and one of them got into serious trouble last year, as the Jamie Oliver Restaurant Group recorded losses of nearly £10 million. Six of the Jamie’s Italian restaurants were closed and this year it was announced that a further 12 would have to shut, too, with the loss of a reported 450 jobs.
THE BOSS IS GETTING A KICKING – LEFT RIGHT AND CENTRE
There are just 25 left. His two flagship Barbecoa steakhouse restaurants also went into administration, although he bought one back.
‘We’re now left with robust restaurants that do really well, but it’s a really tough market. Caring doesn’t pay in this environment, do you know what I mean? I can’t take away my free-range chicken.’
That i nsistence on ethically sourced, organic food is part of what made Jamie’s Italian stand out in the first place, a decade ago, but it also made the ingredients more expensive. ‘I don’t want to do what everyone el se i s doing, because I’d rather not have the restaurants. But having gone through what we have I was able to go save thousands of jobs.’
Officially, the new CEO of the restaurant business, Jonathan Knight, says 1,900 jobs have been saved. Still, I wonder what those people being put out of work made of Jools posting snapshots of their mansion on Instagram. Does he care about them? What about the small suppliers whose friends took to Twitter to ask if they would get paid? ‘I do care. I was the only shareholder that put money in to save the business and to pay the staff. In the old days, the whole business would’ve gone down.’
He put £3 million more of his own money into the failing restaurant group so it could go into a company voluntary agreement, enabling a restructure and therefore escaping a complete wipeout.
‘We had parts of the business that were inefficient, we were in places we shouldn’t have been, there were rents we shouldn’t have agreed to.’
Other companies like Byron hamburgers have been hit by the same slump in people going out to eat in mid-range restaurants, he says.
‘ This is the hard edge of the high street, which many of us are facing. There’s a legal process to go through but, on the whole, our suppliers have still got a customer and they’ll be seen right. We’ll work it out.’
He looks uneasy. ‘Look, it’s been very uncomfortable. I’ve had to man up and make a big decision. Do you just let it all go down or go in and let some go down to save the rest? We have got a great business, and we will bounce back.’
Now he’s fired up. The tiredness has gone. As he takes me to the door, Oliver sounds determined to keep campaigning. ‘We’re vulnerable. The boss is getting a kicking left, right and centre. But we’ll keep going. It’s the right thing to do.’