Oliver’s new twist
Jamie Oliver is on a mission to get the whole world eating healthier in his new TV series Jamie’s Super Food Family Classics. He tells DANIELLE McGRANE how he travelled across the globe in an effort to improve everyday meals.
Jamie Oliver has plans to make Australia super. For his plan to work, he travelled the world and examined something close to his heart: food.
The celebrity chef took himself to different parts of the globe, from the Korean island of Jeju, to the Swiss alps and Sardinia in Italy, to examine communities where life expectancy is high.
The secret to their longevity largely comes down to what they eat, which he explores in Jamie’s Super Food Family Classics.
“What we’ve tried to do in the series is say, ‘Well, actually guys, here are all the parts of the world where people live the longest. Look at the ingredients they’re using – most of it is really everyday’,” Oliver said.
With a focus on super foods, Oliver explains these are not unobtainable fad ingredients bought in health food stores but are, by his definition, any fruit or vegetable, berry, nut and seed.
“No one ingredient has the whole package,” he said, adding that including these in our diet doesn’t have to be complicated.
“If you love potato then for a third, or half, the week, swap it out for sweet potato. Sweet potatoes are often found in the areas where people live the longest. It’s super nutritious and also you can mash it, roast it, chip it, do whatever you want with it. So swapping that half of the time for potatoes is an upgrade.”
Oliver says there are other small changes people can make quite easily. Changing white pasta to whole wheat, and doing the same with bread, acts as an automatic upgrade to any diet.
“Australia isn’t getting enough fibre, which has some amazing health benefits – and also, if you don’t have it, it can have some real health negatives,” he said.
While Oliver advises these smaller dietary changes, he also examines what other cultures eat to try to figure out the secrets to their longevity.
“When you start taking in places around the world, these little areas pop out where they have unusually large proportions of 80, 90 and 100-year-olds, and you have to ask yourself why,” he said.
“I felt the metaphor for the series was that super foods don’t have to be goji berries and quinoa. Actually, it can be a carrot. It can even be a sweet potato and pasta – there’s nothing wrong with carbohydrates. Let’s just teach you a few things about them so you can understand them.”
Oliver shares in the show some of the habits he picked up from these healthy enclaves. And when looking back, he comes away with some things they all have in common.
“Everything they eat is organic because that’s what’s around them,” he said.
“I think, generally speaking, what they’ve done is they’ve made their life not too convenient. They’ve created excuses in their life to go upstairs, to have to reach up to the cupboard. Some of the communities sit on the floor so, by default, they’re doing 20 squats a day.”
The idea for the show came from viewers.
“The tone out there at the moment, which is really clear in these days of social media in the thousands of comments I receive every single week, is people want to know about food,” he said.
“They’ll ask, ‘Is that good? Is that bad? Will that kill you? Is a carbohydrate bad for you? Is this diet OK?’.”
The TV chef can ultimately boil the answers to all of these questions down to one thing: knowledge.
“In the show, what we’ve tried to do is say, ‘Look, these guys are living the longest, they’re not rich, but what they are rich in is knowledge’. It’s the most powerful thing,” he said.
Oliver also shows how to put this knowledge into practice in everyday meals.
“In the show, I’ve tried to balance stuff that’s really everyday but done healthy,” he said.
“We’ve taken things such as burgers, and mac and cheese, and shepherd’s pie, things that might be seen as indulgent, but rewritten them to be super healthy.
“And then we’ve tried to look at the food from where I’ve travelled … and say, ‘Here’s an amazing Korean dish’, or, ‘ Here’s a wicked curry’.
“It doesn’t have to be boring and it doesn’t have to be expensive.”
It’s just another way in which he has tried to change the world for the better, tackling obesity issues and health problems.
“I think my job is to give the public legit recipes and then, hopefully, with a little bit of a twist that they feel really comfortable with, they can put a few surprises in there,” he said.
The result is a series that reveals even more about him: the chef and food revolutionary.
“In a way, this series is probably the most personal I’ve made,” he said.
“This is what’s going on in my cupboards, in my fridge, in my freezer, Monday-toFriday lunch. That’s what’s going on.”
Oliver: “Super foods don’t have to be goji berries and quinoa. Actually, it can be a carrot. It can even be a sweet potato and pasta – there’s nothing wrong with carbohydrates.”