Jamie Oliver’s Communication Problem

I know that school lunch and the obesity epidemic isn’t exactly Feministing’s beat, but have you all been watching Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution? (Bear with me, I promise this does eventually come back to feminism.)
 
Full episodes are available here: http://abc.go.com/shows/jamie-olivers-food-revolution

Jamie Oliver, aka “The Naked Chef,” is a chef and food activist. In Food Revolution he travels to Huntington West Virginia, which is statistically the “unhealthiest city in America.” The inevitable reality-show conflict comes from some members of the community that don’t like him and are resistant to the idea of making changes.

A big part of Oliver’s strategy has to do with school food. There are scenes in which he tries to help the schools make changes to their nutrition program (which really appears to be dismal). To do so, he goes in to teach the women that work in the cafeteria.

In the pilot episode, he’s having a hard time winning over the “lunch ladies.” Part of this has to do with the fact that the women feel defensive over things they feel they have little control over (they’re trying to work within a budget within a flawed system). Part of the problem is a substantial class barrier between the working-class, southern-American women and the privileged British celebrity chef.
But perhaps part of it was because he insisted on referring to the women- all old enough to be his mother- as “girls.” Although the chance that these women identify as feminists is admittedly small, I can’t imagine Oliver’s attitude endeared him to them.
Jamie Oliver has great ideas and apparently has done great things in his country to encourage healthy eating. But unless he finds a way to communicate with the cafeteria workers (and all people of Huntington) in a way that isn’t so patronizing, he’s going to risk losing his message.