I just watched the first episode of Jamie Oliver's new show on Hulu, and I'm hooked!  Jamie Oliver is the celebrity British chef that many people love to hate.  And admittedly, his schtick on his original television show was often just too much to bear.  However, Jamie Oliver turns out to be far more than "the naked chef."  He's the Bono of the culinary set.

Aside from starting an exclusive culinary institute for disadvantaged kids, Jamie Oliver is famous in Britain for having converted a school lunch program from gross processed food to, you know, REAL FOOD.  He called this campaign "Feed Me Better," and moved the British government to step into the issue of what's being fed to school children.  This was the subject of a four-part BBC documentary titled "Jamie's School Dinners."

Oliver is bringing the same magic to the rural town of Huntington, West Virginia.  Although I haven't watched the BBC documentary, I have to think that West Virginia is considerably less keen on Jamie Oliver than Yorkshire was.  To say that Jamie faces push-back in the first episode of "Food Revolution" is to be exceptionally coy.

The disaster begins slowly, but quickly picks up steam.  Oliver is first made unwelcome by the four women responsible for cooking the school lunches at Huntington's grade school.  The temperature is chilly enough to safely store meat products as Jamie attempts to disguise his revulsion at, for example, the kids being fed pizza for breakfast.

Oliver's food ethic is "the fresher, the better."  At least at this early state, he doesn't seem to particularly care what people eat, as long as it's a single-ingredient item with minimal preparation and dressing.  When he prepares lunch for the school children he chooses to bake fresh chicken drumsticks, after a quick soak in a simple pineapple teriyaki marinade.  Nothing revolutionary or bizarre - just basic fresh ingredients, prepared simply.

Next Jamie goes on a local talk show, where he is berated and bullied by a pugnacious local radio personality.  Oliver's words - both on that show and apparently culled from every interview he's ever done - are then twisted and published in the local paper such that it looks like he's publicly insulting the good people of West Virginia.

By the time the episode was over, I didn't half wonder if Oliver was heading straight for a nervous breakdown.  There is a glimmer of hope in his experience with one family he visits.  He has the mother cook up everything they eat in a week and pile it all on the table - pancakes, deep fried doughnuts, and all.  Confronted with the reality of what they have been eating, the family then helps Oliver prepare a classic Jamie Oliver meal - pasta dressed with tomatoes and garlic roasted quickly in olive oil, and a big chop salad.  Afterward they go out into the yard, and Oliver helps them ceremoniously bury their Fry Daddy, in a sequence which should have been hilarious, but turned unexpectedly touching.

Watching "Food Revolution" the viewer is struck by two conflicting emotions: it hardly seems fair for one town in West Virginia to bear the dietary sins of the entire country.  But at the same time, maybe if the people of Huntington were a little more open-minded and a little less combative when it comes to food, they wouldn't have earned the sad distinction of being "America's Unhealthiest City."