The policemen who guard the Downing Street guards are used to rag-tag protesters rocking up and chanting in their faces. But Friday afternoon brought with it a more well-heeled crowd than usual, as a myriad collection of 200 kids and campaigners rocked up in Whitehall to protest the government’s U-turn on the obesity strategy.
And at the centre of this bourgeois brouhaha was of course, the familiar face of Jamie Oliver, holding aloft an ‘Eton mess’ in true twee fashion. Oliver was incandescent at Johnson’s decision, as he told the crowd beneath his own Union Jack umbrella, leading them in a chant of ‘Eton!’ to which they replied ‘mess!’ Subtlety never was his strong suit…
It seems that scrapping ‘buy-one-get-one-free’ deals in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis is now apparently a progressive cause – an irony Oliver’s many critics were keen to point out. Yet it’s not the first time the ‘naked chef’ has had his low points in public, as Mr S can only remember too well…
Food poverty
In spite of 15 years of campaigning for healthier diets, there are doubts as to whether the chef – who is worth an estimated £240 million – appreciates what life is like for those less well-off. He’s had frequent run-ins with campaigners on this issue. In 2013, campaigner Jack Monroe, who came to prominence thanks to her blog about feeding herself and her son on £10 week, called him ‘a poverty tourist turned self-appointed tour guide’ whose comments about poor people squandering their cash on televisions ‘support damaging myths that poor people are only poor because they spend their money on the wrong things, rather than being constrained by time, equipment, knowledge or practicalities.’
His comparisons between dietary habits in the UK with Mediterranean countries like Spain and Italy also prompted a backlash about the levels of poverty there too. Others pointed out last week his absence from campaigns by Monroe and footballer Marcus Rashford for free school meals during the pandemic. There was also a 2018 run-in with the National Farmers’ Union over the Red Tractor scheme, which helps families on lower incomes buy food confident that it had been created to a high standards.
His own foods
Oliver hasn’t always been so keen to practice what he preaches when it comes to healthy foods. His branded partnership in 2019 with Shell included snacks with four times more fat than a McDonald’s hamburger and just as many calories. Another had six times more salt than a portion of fries; with just three of 81 items in the Jamie Oliver Deli by Shell being low in fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt. As for his own recipes, it was revealed in 2012 that many of his items had more calories and fat than meals from supermarkets. His 30 Minute Meals recipe for meatball sandwich, pickled cabbage and chopped salad, for four people, has just under 1,000 calories per serving. And don’t get Mr S started on that Eton mess he held up outside Downing Street, with a mere 300g caster sugar, 250ml double cream and icing sugar required.
Other efforts which backfired include the revelation in 2011 that he had been serving endangered eel in his restaurant – while fronting the ‘Big Fish Fight’ campaign to highlight the declining stocks of marine fish. As an advocate of local produce and cooking meals from scratch, Oliver was also embarrassed that same year after the sauces used in Jamie’s Italian in Glasgow were found to be from an industrial park almost 400 miles away in Bicester.
His other businesses
It’s not just Oliver’s food campaigns that have ruffled feathers. The collapse of his Jamie’s Italian restaurants in 2018 came at a time when the business owned £83 million to various creditors such as food suppliers, councils and landlords; the bulk of which will never be repaid. Before that, there were reports of food safety violations at his Guildford restaurant and ‘serious hygiene issues’ at his exclusive London butchery Barbecoa. Other controversies include a storm about an advertising levy imposed by Woolworths for Australian farmers using produce he endorsed and accusations of ‘greenwashing’ over his £5 million deal with shell.
His feud with Boris
It’s worth remembering that Oliver’s criticisms of Johnson aren’t exactly new. Cast your minds back to 2006, when David Cameron – then Leader of the Opposition – was trying to win plaudits by criticising ‘unhealthy eating’ and aligning himself with Oliver on this issue. Boris’s response? To tell a fringe meeting at that year’s party conference that ‘If I were in charge, I would get rid of Jamie Oliver and tell people to eat what they liked.’
That comment won Johnson plaudits from the libertarian right of his party but earned Oliver’s lasting enmity. As Dominic Lawson helpfully points out in today’s Mail, in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit referendum in 2016, when it briefly seemed that Johnson might succeed Cameron, the TV chef raged on Instagram: ‘Give me Boris fucking Johnson as our Prime Minister and I’m done. I’m out. My faith in us will be broken for ever.’
Comments