Jamie Oliver ’s heart is clearly in the right place but his antennae for reality would appear to need a service.
The celebrity chef led a march on Downing Street last Friday to protest against a government decision to delay banning buy-one-get-one-free (BOGOF) offers on fattening junk food.
So far, so fair enough. Trouble is, timing is everything and during a cost of living crisis the last thing the kind of people struggling to eat want to hear is a celebrity chef with a small fortune who doesn’t want for very much telling them how they should eat.
For those people, a BOGOF meal eases the pressure on their finances and is, perhaps, a lunch meal on a day when they otherwise wouldn’t eat.
So it really is no surprise he is suffering a backlash.
Oliver strikes you as a down-to-earth sort with a grasp on the way real people live. The lending of his voice has helped to force child obesity to the top of the government agenda.
But when you find you have limited funds – or none at all – you have a choice between expensive healthy eating or cheap junk food.
Unsurprisingly, people choose what they can afford. Not what they prefer. So if Oliver wants to campaign, why not use his energies to force prices down.
Better still, why doesn’t he slash the prices on his food tie-up with fuel company Shell?
While he is at it, why doesn’t he slash the calories too?
His Jamie Oliver deli by Shell range at service stations includes a BLT Triple sandwich, said to come in at 554 calories – more than a Big Mac.
He has already had to defend his partnership deal with the oil giant after being accused of hypocrisy given his previous work as an environmental campaigner.
“If we want Britain to be in a healthier, more productive place in 15 to 20 years, we absolutely need businesses to be on that journey,” he told Marketing Week in 2019. The trouble is, while he is able to look at the long term, ordinary people forced to use food banks can’t.
Still, if Oliver rails at the Prime Minister, clutching his Eton Mess in Downing Street, he is at least likely to get an answer from the Government.
Ordinary people are not listened to. They are resigned to having to do what they can to survive.
