Don't feed your children frozen chicken nuggets. Cook them first.

"Look at these beautiful, healthy stalks of wheat" [Chops off stalks] "There's a lot of good stuff in this part. Lots of fibre, healthy nutrients" "Now we're left with *this*. The little bits of protein stuck to the hard, inedible parts" [Gestures at wheat seeds} "Looks awful, right? Now we're gonna grind them up and sift out the hard bits. And we're left with this bland, awful white powder [shows audience a bowl of flour] "That's disgusting yeah? Would you eat this? No, of course not. But watch, we're gonna mix in some water and other industrial additives [mixes in egg, sugar, baking powder, vanilla extract] then put it in the oven for a while and just wait" [60 minutes later] "Alright, look at this. It's gross. Disgusting. Would you eat this? Awful" [pulls a fucking cake out of the oven] "That's what they do with the parts of wheat that nobody wants. It's a tragedy against cooking."

People will romanticize "Native Americans used every part of the buffalo", and then get classist about chicken nuggets and Velveeta cheese. Are they against waste, or aren't they?

"I don't wanna suggest Jamie Oliver is classist" well, as of writing, the man is currently protesting the UK government in order to get them to ban buy-one-get-one-free deals from supermarkets, so I, personally, am rather comfortable in assigning him so

Ah yes, the 5 basic forms of conflict: Man vs. Man, Man vs. Self, Man vs. Environment. Man vs. Technology and Man vs. Chicken Nuggets.

It's really gross to watch a multimillionaire chef teaching children in WV, a state with 1 in 5 kids facing food insecurity, that the food they like and that their parents can afford is "dirty."

When Jamie Oliver asked the kids in West Virginia about it, I think the fact that it's a West Virginia is an interesting piece of information. That's a state where hunting is still a big part of the culture. So I'm sure many of these kids have probably like, seeing their dad's skin a deer, or at least heard one of their friends talking about it. So, like, yeah, if you know the process of how an animal becomes a piece of food. It's not particularly gross to see it happen.

Wanna know something funny? Jamie Oliver went on TV and made an entire episode of his _American Road Trip_ that basically blamed fast food and other "dirty" foods for indigenous peoples' health problems. He summarized the (ongoing) genocide of indigenous people in about 2-4 sentences in the middle of the episode, and then continued railing on about all the dirty food they're eating. Jamie used Navajo people as a rhetorical tool, and used their stories of how food in their communities was being westernized-how their culture is continuously erased from the public eye-to whinge about fast food. Btw, Jamie Oliver would have an aneurism if he found out about scrapple.

Here in Scotland, Jamie Oliver once proposed a ban on 2-for-1 pizza deals in the name of "healthy eating", as if there's an epidemic of people buying and eating two pizzas to themselves, and there aren't a bunch of working class families who can't afford take-out as a treat without such offers. Not surprising to hear that his other arguments speak to that same simple classism

It's weird to see a chef characterize the chicken carcass as "garbage." Does he not make chicken stock? Does it not occur to him that it's cheaper to use as much of the animal as possible?

I’ve never understood the “ew pink slime bad” argument when, in my opinion, we *should* try to maximize what we use out of an animal. Our world is wasteful enough already.

LOL Jamie Oliver literally posted a recipe for "Thai Red Curry" that was neither Thai, nor red, nor even curry but was made with tomato paste, olive oil and soy sauce.

If you want to have a laugh- Jamie Oliver opened up a huge new restaurant in my town a few years ago. It was expensive, the food was bland and reviewers absolutely panned it. It closed down last year and was replaced with a Macdonald's

That clip has always bothered me. Jamie's shocked that the kids are still happy to eat chicken nuggets, when he's given absolutely no reason for them not to. They, along with the audience, are expected to just take it for granted that this food is bad because it looks gross. I mean, grow up.

"These are the kids who don't want to eat MY chicken. These are the kids who want their nuggets back. I'm gonna show them what's in their f***ing nuggets." That right here shows you how ABSOLUTELY petty Jamie Oliver's entire view on this actually is. He doesn't care about the chicken nuggets or whatever they are made. He's just pissed off that the kids want something that isn't his.

hearing Jamie Oliver get pissed off and determined to show children "what's in their fucking chicken nuggets" feels really awkward and uncomfortable when it's about young school children opting for something they are familiar with and know they like over a professional chef's food they have just tried and aren't used to.

West Virginia is the second-poorest state in the US. Statistically at least one of those kids lives in poverty, and likely relies on school meals to keep themselves fed. It’s disgusting to me that they’re being used as an example of “the decline of the new generation” as opposed to realizing that those kids could easily have grown up knowing hunger and therefore will eat anything.

I'm British and I'm VERY comfortable saying that Jamie Oliver is classist.

God as a italian woman I hate the whole "good meat, bad meat" argument. In Italy there are A LOT of traditional and delicious foods made from the parts of the animal people usually throw out. Even the chicken carcass, the head, and the chicken feet are used to make chicken broth. Pork skin, we add it to the pan so the fat melts and adds flavour to the dish even if you don't eat it later. You can basically use EVERY PART of the animal, it's more respectful.

I’m a Canadian, but watching those little American kids ignore Jamie’s bloviating to raise their hands and ask for nuggets makes me say God Bless America.

It is strange to think people can hate on foods like nuggets and then also complain about how wasteful the food industry is.

“It’s just as time efficient to make chicken nuggets from scratch as it is to put a box of them in the oven” tells me loud and clear that he does none of the cleaning/laundry/general childcare in his house.

Dan, in 2021: making homemade chicken strips to demonstrate his point Dan, in 2022: writing a 25000 word book in one month to demonstrate his point

I remember one episode where Jamie went to a Highschool, gave a group of teenage volunteers ONE DAY of training, and asked them to cater a huge banquet for the teachers/parents with one day's notice. It would've been hard for grown adults with enough training to do that. But when they inevitability had difficulties and were overwhelmed, he dropped multiple f bombs and stormed out - on literal kids, mind you. Man's a wackjob.

Just to 'Yes And' this - I think it's interesting to think about Jamie Oliver's war on nuggets in the context of a very British tradition of "moral intervention in the lower classes" that Victorian women used to do a lot of! You find a cause, like chicken nuggets, that's largely aesthetic (as you point out), moralise it, and then intervene without actually doing much about the underlying causes of the problem. At the same time you get to feel like you're doing charity work, and you vilif the aesthetic signifiers of poverty. Jamie Oliver was actually one of the kinder embodiments of that tradition: at least some kids did get to try some new and perhaps healthier food as a result, or learn some cooking skills. At the same time there was also a widespread hatred for "Chavs" being spread; the Blair government increased the criminalisation of documented working class people with the use of ASBOs; and Blair also expanded the use of concentration camps for undocumented migrants who are disproportionately working class. What's also interesting is that those who criticised Jamie Oliver by and large didn't do it on the grounds you did here: criticism tended to portray him as a busybody, or just make fun of his voice and haircut. The long-term effect of Jamie's work was to entrench "school dinners" as a site of absolute psychosis in the minds of the British commentariat, to the extent that when Jeremy Corbyn ran for office with a manifesto that included free school meals for all children to be paid for by raising taxes on private schools he was portrayed as dangerously insane.

The inventor of chicken nuggets, Cornell Professor Robert C. Baker, grew up during the Great Depression and squeezing every last calorie out of a chicken genuinely was one of his motivations. He didn't start a chicken processing empire, even though he invented nuggets, chicken/turkey dogs, turkey ham, etc. He published his research academically and widely distributed his recipes for anyone to use and refine. Every time I see that Jamie Oliver clip, I can't help but wonder if he has any idea about the origins and purpose of the nugget. However, the more I learn about him makes me think he certainly wouldn't care.

Dan touched on it, but around 2005 he tried to overhaul school meals in a pilot project. The cost of the meals skyrocketed and parents were seen outside the gates giving their kids bags from MaccyD's and again he framed it as somekind of psychological brainwashing. Why can't these parents stop being poor and buy his exorbitant school meals. The irony of Jaime Oliver is he burst onto the scene as the working class answer to celebrity chefs, but while the like of comparitively posh Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall (sp.) Actually uses widely available produce and Nigella Lawson makes fun of herself for using obscure ingredients, Oliver frequently conjures up meals that you could only possibly shop for in the trendiest produce stores in London if you had a massive wallet. The guy is so detached from the pulse of the nation yet parades himself as some kind of saviour. As a Brit I will say, he's widely regarded as a gobshite.

Jamie Oliver's bizarre belief that the number of ingredients is inversely correlated to the quality of a meal really bugs me. I had the misfortune of eating at one of his restaurants before they went the way of his chicken carcass, and I had the blandest mixed grill I've ever had in my life. I didn't know it was even possible to make meat taste that boring.

Even as a vegetarian, I hate the "ew, it's goopy and isn't a breast or thigh" idea. If you're killing a bird, use all of the bird, damnit.

This feels weirdly personal for Jamie, like as he became a chef his family and friends wouldn't stop eating "low quality food" even as he showed them how much "better" they can eat or something. Someone refused to eat his chicken and instead ate chicken nuggets, and that's now Jamie's villain origin story.

He's totally classist. There's a real problem with classism in food in general.

If you want the sole evidence that Jamie should never be taken seriously when it comes to cooking or anything food related is that he used PRECOOKED rice packets for an egg fried rice recipe. He is a professional chef that couldn't be bothered to properly prepare the main ingredient of his dish.

The "it looks gross" argument never worked for me because all raw chicken looks really gross to me

in high school I was in a program that demo'd Michelle Obama's healthier school meal initiative, one of the pilot programs. We had special chefs come in to "teach" the older ladies that ran the place how to make a healthy meal, as if they didn't know how. For several months, funding was poured in and we had plenty of greens and higher quality meals. When the training part (the PR initiative) was over the money was gone and it was back to chicken nuggets, brick slices of pizza and so on. We didn't need a savior to tell us the difference between good food and bad food. The school just needed money for food.

Can we just acknowledge that the guy who says chicken nuggets are gross put chilli jam in fried rice

Bullying Jamie Oliver is not only be encouraged, it's a moral obligation.

Five bucks says Jamie Oliver would agree with "We should reduce food waste" and then have a fit if you mentioned nuggets as one way to do so.

I was a lunchlady in America for a little over a year. School districts hire a private company to come in and handle all of their lunchrooms. That company has a nutritionists on staff who makes menus according to guidelines we knew nothing about. Everyone in the actual kitchen was unskilled labor (in the sense that their effort was not reflected in their paychecks) Additional nachos, tater tots, pizza, cakes, and a few healthier options like salads, fruits, and even sushi were available at an additional cost. Some kids would regularly spend >$10 on lunch each day. Some kids would find their parents hadn't put any money in their account. I could put the kids in debt up to a limit of about -$10 and if their parents hadn't payed by then, I was instructed to confiscate and discard their lunch. I was then supposed to replace it with a crustless PB&J disk that was still technically considered feeding the child. This powerful shaming ritual was designed to get the kids to complain to their parents about it until they ponied up. I would just let them keep it and nobody noticed, so the whole policy must not have had much impact on anything but the self esteem and psyche of thousands of hungry children.

Here's the thing people miss about Jamie Oliver; he doesn't actually love, or even have a basic appreciation for, food. He has an appreciation for fine dining and cuisine, but that seems (at least to me) to be more about prestige. It is obvious from his "culturally-inspired" recipes (if you can even call them that) that he does not have enough care for the original to successfully recreate them, nor does he show any self-awareness for the cultural basis behind why certain foods are prepared in their specific ways. Beyond being hilariously bad recreations of iconic foods (that themselves became iconic through availability to the common folk), they often use ingredients that do not belong in those dishes traditionally (largely due to availability), while also lacking ingredients that are traditionally used in them due to his personal distaste. It would be one thing if he were unable to source the proper ingredients, due to either cost or distance, but that actually brings me to another point of contention with him. He will belittle people for eating "dirty" sustenance foods they can reliably obtain and afford, while also touting himself as superior for being able to appreciate the "cleaner," "healthier," "prime" cuts that cost more than twice as much in most cases. So what is his excuse for his own recipes? If cost is not his consideration, then surely he could at least source the proper ingredients, or even superior yet comparable ingredients, in order to maintain some level of authenticity. No. I view Jamie Oliver, at best, as a trendy wannabe chef who I would barely consider a competent home cook. Even a decent home cook can take cheaper, less desirable ingredients and create a meal. He fails to demonstrate proficiency with even basic techniques (using a colander on over-boiled, waterlogged rice), is entirely carried by ingredient quality (which doesn't matter if the end result is a mess), has no real concept of how cost or effort can constrain people, and the list goes on. I don't think Jamie Oliver likes cooking, or even the food. I think he's after the fame, money, and prestige that comes with being a chef.

Around the time Super Size Me came out, I remember one of my cousins constantly dangling making me watch the movie over my head like a threat every time I mentioned craving McDonald's. Eventually I watched it in high school for health class with a similarly opinionated teacher, and all I could think is "Yeah, no shit you shouldn't eat McDonald's three times a day, 7 days a week." I get a similar energy from this, as if Jaime Oliver truly believes all these kids eat are chicken nuggets for every meal.

Jamie Oliver: Carcasses, skin and organ meats are gross Also Jamie Oliver: Look at this lovely jubbly crispy chicken skin. Right, let's roast these bones for stock then get back to our chicken liver pate.

For American viewers, an important note. Oliver's accent registers as hilariously, stereotypically working class London to his UK audience. The extent to which it's genuine is... debatable. What's defiitely true is that he represents his father's business as a 'pub', when it's actually a rather more commercial operation than that implies. Any analysis involving both Oliver and class is necessarily going to get very complicated. It's really not clear to what extent his own class signifiers are performative.

"I'm going to show them what's in their fucking nuggets" is super strong energy for what is supposed to be a fun food education show

If Jamie thinks this is disgusting, he should show those kids how they make Black Pudding or Haggis, but something tells me he'd never do it or he'd spin it in favor of it and then let's see how many kids will raise their hands to show they'd want to eat it.

This remainds me how in México, Cow Tongue it's an expensive dish only eaten in special ocations, but around 40 to 60 years ago, it was dirt chip because "who wants to eat cow Tongue? It's dirty". It's all about framing, "dirty parts" of an animal is a myth that only wastes food

It's kinda funny that he basically sees exclusively eating the prime cuts as the natural state of things.

The thing is, even ruling out "dirty" ingredients, we love nuggets because they're incredibly consistent and reliable. You don't get weird textures or unexpected spots of flavor. In a world of sensory hell, "tolerable" is league's better than "yet another giant gamble".

I'm a grown man and sitting there watching Jamie make chicken nuggets and he's like "Raise your hand if you want to eat that" I'm raising my hand with those kids. Yeah, pre cooked meat looks gross, Jamie. I don't know about you but the chicken breasts he was showing off as prime meat looked gross to me. He wants to just throw that carcass in the trash? I see that carcass and I see three options. The first is make his "gross" nuggets, which I consider a comfort food anyway, the second is to boil it to make chicken stock, or at the very least chuck it in the oven for like 30 minutes, let it cool, and then give it to my dog. We need to be efficient here, Jamie. You shouldn't be wasteful with the meat that chicken gave it's life to produce

I find the "whole chicken paste is gross" demonstration utterly hilarious. He's a professional chef, surely he's familiar with Pâté Literally the only difference is which meat it is, and if chicken carcasses are "the bad parts" when we shouldn't be making chicken broth either.

Something I'm noticing now after a couple rewatches of this video is Oliver's weird, like.... Anger, at the children themselves, when they bring up that they'd still eat the chicken nuggets, and more specifically with the comment of "I'll show them what's in their fucking nuggets." I don't know if it's just me, but that comment and Jamie's overall attitude came off as weirdly outright vengeful at children effectively just being children

There's also the issue that many of the people who decry inexpensive processed food are also people who view cooking as a leisure activity. For them, the extra hands-on time involved in preparing fried chicken from scratch doesn't matter/isn't a cost because it's something they would do for enjoyment anyway.

It's funny how there is absolutely no problem with a kid if they agree with him, but if they don't, suddenly the system is corrupting our children.

For a parent, Jamie is impressively bad with kids. Instead of trying to engage them, he seems to have contempt for them and are trying to 'win' points during the interaction.

I grew up with a Southern granny who regularly fed us bone soups and fried organs who would have been appalled by Jamie Oliver. She didn’t survive the depression by only eating the “good” parts of the chicken. She saved her bacon grease and used the whole bird. Lived to 88.

I come back to this video fairly frequently, and something that really stuck with me this time is the point about food prep being completely ignored in how certain people talk about healthy eating. I'm sure food prep seems easy and not like a big deal if you have a prep cook who comes in every morning and chops all your vegetables and cleans all your meat for you. I'm sure the amount of dishes it creates doesn't matter to you when you have a minimum wage worker washing all your dishes for you. A professional chef doesn't have to worry about that, it's the work that poor people do, and obviously if they're poor, it must not be difficult.

I watched that show when it came out and a couple things stuck out to me: 1) when he made a meal with foods that would have been unfamiliar and unappetizing to most kids and then let the kids choose between that and like, pizza, and then acted baffled that the kids chose the pizza. He could have made healthier pizza, but instead he set them up for "failure". 2) he had one family who was used to frozen food and deep-frying everything stock up on a TON (fridge overflowing) of raw vegetables and then got mad when he came back and they hadn't cooked all of them. Again setting them up for failure; I love cooking with fresh vegetables but it can be a challenge for anyone to cook that much from scratch especially if they're not used to it.

Jamie Oliver is a real artifact of Blair-era TV, one of the more annoying faces in an era defined by seething classism. It also highlights how a lot of healthy eating or environmentalism focuses on totems like 'processed' which really don't help people understand what they are consuming.

I like how jaime says that "we manipulated our children" while hes manipulating the shit out of them with his phrasings.

I'm a food snob. 99% of all hot meals I eat are home cooked, mostly from scratch. But, I would never expect anyone to do the same. If you invite me for dinner I eat what you serve, home cooked or pre-packaged, and I will praise and thank you. Unless it's kale, then we have a problem.

I'm Polish. To question of what to do with the carcass I see only one answer: "Make goddamn chicken soup!" Everyone loves chicken soup.

"Food prep is extremely time and energy intensive, and it's maddening that so much of the hay about healthy eating relies on pretending that it's not" - THANK YOU this is so validating, god

"Would you rather eat cheap food or expensive food?" "Expensive." "Wow, this really says a lot about our society."

As a vegetarian, I appreciate chicken nuggets because they're one of few things where the plant based version is almost identical to the taste & texture of the animal version.

You just know Jamie wouldn't have to be asked twice if he wanted "Carnard a la presse", yet that is a dish made from blood and bone marrow extracted from duck bones by crushing the carcass in a press. Beside the skin and the way *some* chicken meat is stripped from the skeleton, is it really that much different beside class and general quality?

The level of disdain in his voice at both the kids and the nuggets when he says "I want to show them whats in their fucking nuggets" is startling

"Then, What they do, is add MORE chicken skin." Nearly 40 year old me, almost inaudibly: "...fuck yes."

My hypothesis: Jamie Oliver doesn't hate ready-made nuggets. He hates that he loves them. One aspect of this that I think is missed about Jamie Oliver if you're not from the UK: He himself is from very humble beginnings. He used to sell produce on a market stall, with that loud "lower class" accent. I think for a lot of us born into poverty in the UK, there's this idea sold to us that in order to better ourselves, we must rid ourselves of our shameful poor people things. Maybe he feels shame any time he sneaks a nugget, and so took to threatening children and adults the world over with a nuggetless future to rid himself of this shame. Still can't forgive him for ruining turkey twizzlers.

Even assuming his healthy/unhealthy dichotomy holds true (which it doesn't), why does he focus on making "unhealthy" food inaccessible and not on making "healthy" food accessible?

As an aside, can I just say that this whole thing is one of the major reasons I had SUPREME RESPECT for Anthony Bourdain? The man would eat WaHo or a New York street cart hot dog with the same relish and appreciation that he would while eating at The French Laundry. He had a respect and appreciation for the craft but also understood that, at the end of the day, good food is just good food.

Almost ate a disgusting, fake food that contained hard-to-pronounce words like hydroxycinnamic acids, oligomeric procyanidins, and dihydrochalcones. You know, apples.

And a year later, in the middle of a massive CoL crisis all over the world, this video has become even more relevant. I actually discussed this with one of my parents this week - we're all in the position where we can still afford fresh veg and fruits without having to worry about the cost - even if the amount of food you get for, say, 50 bucks has about halved in half a year -, but for many people that plain isn't the case anymore, if it ever was. If your unemployment assistance per month is 500 bucks or your minimum wage job has a take-home pay of maybe 700 while your energy/gas bill is over 200 (if you're lucky) and a kg of apples costs 4, while processed up the ass applesauce is 69 cents per pound... yeah, if you want something apple-y, that's where you'll have to go. Same with the nuggets - a kg of chicken breast meat is 11-12 bucks now, while a box with a pound of nugs is 3-4 bucks. In the past, you could still go to the butcher's and buy bones, gristle and maybe some organ meat for very cheap or ask for discarded bread bits at the baker's, but in a world where butcheries and bakeries have basically vanished in favour of supermarkets and the few remaining shops are chains that don't do their own work anymore and thus don't have such stuff on offer, there's not really many ways to get cheap calories without resorting to ultra-processed food. If food choices aren't a choice, but picking the cheapest option is a necessity... then it's not a choice anymore, now is it.

What Dan fails to tell you though; Jamie was once mugged. And that mugger.. was a nugget. Yeah, feel pretty lousy now knowing that, don't ya? Don't feel like eating nuggets now, do ya? SAD.

"I'm a cook, Dan. I like to insult little chicken nuggets like these because they remind me of food cooked by the crack w***e - my birth mother. I'm sure you can guess why." He says it in a rush as if he's had the sentence in his head for days and days and is desperate to be rid of it.

I honestly find Jamie's argument comical. Growing up as an Asian, my mum and dad would eat collagen and the fatty parts of the meat. They would try not to waste a single scrap. To us it was all good food and there was no reason to not eat it. We'd always bones and carcases for broth and sometimes my dad would eat chicken feet or duck necks with some beer. Certain parts might not be as nice as the muscle but I just find it funny that Jamie hates it so much.

An aspect of nuggets/convenience foods that is rarely brought up is that they offer access to a consistent experience for those unable to cook anything more elaborate, or those with sensory issues that make eating a more diverse diet a tricky proposition. I'm grateful that I'm not weirded out by as many foods as some of my neurodivergent peers. It makes it easier for me to eat what's available in a variety of situations. That's simply not the case for a lot of people. It's not merely a matter of having a fussy palate, but that it is a sensory nightmare for some to deal with certain textures and/or flavors. Begrudging someone the opportunity to have a consistent eating experience is ridiculous. What they put into their mouths is their business alone. So, his argument is both classist and ableist.

That freakin' horror stinger as the children raise their hands gets me cracking up every dang time. And then the innocent children consumed... CHICKEN NUGGETS!!! What an utter classicist tool. Can't believe I used to actually semi-respect 'The Naked Chef.'

Food is the perfect example of the concept "being poor is expensive."

It's crazy coming from a post-Soviet country and seeing how normal things absolutely everyone does (homemade stock, canning your own goods, using all the cuts either in soup or for pets or whatever, "lesser" cereals like buckwheat, foraging for mushrooms and berries) were at first viewed in the West as a thing that poors do, and now it's healthy and mindful of the environment and as a result... poor people can't afford that anymore

"I would not pipe tepid meat goo into my mouth." Rewatching this a year later and I've just realized I do this almost every week. Negitoro is a pretty common main ingredient for sushi rolls, and it's literally the ground up bits of raw tuna not otherwise used for nigiri and sashimi cuts, lightly flavored with a bit of green onion.

For the second episode mentioned, Appalachian culture probably has a lot of cuisine that Jamie Oliver wouldn't even consider food.

I still remember Jamie saying on School Dinners how you need to grow you own herbs "and not waste your money buying the shit they sell in supermarkets". Not 30 seconds later it cuts to an ad break and there's Jamie again advertising Waitrose talking about how fresh their herbs are 😂

the point dan makes here about financial poverty being connected to poverty of time is so crucial to the discussion of food diets. if you’re working a job with shit pay and long hours, there’s no way in hell you’ll have the energy for even basic food prep. especially if you have kids. amazing that on-his-high-horse oliver doesn’t even mention it.

Honestly, the classism argument was one that never occurred to me but it's blown my mind to some degree. I was in primary school in the UK (about ages 5-11) when Jamie Oliver first started kicking off his fuss and I remember lunches going from something that was... unhealthy but very good tasting, to something that was really terrible to eat and nobody wanted it; by the end of Year 6 for me, it was incredibly common to only have packed lunches and in secondary school, at-school dinners were solely for those too poor to bring a packed lunch, who were on meal assistance with the council.

regardless of anything else, i don't know how anyone could watch the clip at 1:14 and see any emotion being conveyed other than deep, clawing insecurity.

I'm one of those people who just don't like the texture of chicken nuggets compared to chicken strips. But Jamie Oliver is weird. I LOVE organ meat. Pate is blended organ meat and THAT'S fancy. Fanciness is just a matter of framing.

It’s hard to get across the waves that Jamie Oliver’s School Dinners made in the UK. It completely dominated popular discourse to the extent that all Brits watching this video that were alive at the time will have a visceral response to it. This was in a period where most people in the UK only had 4 channels so a programme like this had the potential to create conversations in a way that seems less likely now. I don’t know about Chicken Nuggets but Turkey Twizzlers we’re outright banned from schools and school dinners are unrecognisable these days: there’s generally more choice, it’s healthier but I would wager it’s more expensive. It’s no overstatement to say that this was as a direct result of Jamie Oliver’s campaigns. I remember them taking out all the vending machines from our school. As someone else has commented, it’s a fascinating example of how an era in which we were told to believe that “we’re all middle class now” was dominated by some of the most barbed and viscous classist representations (see, for another example, Vicky Pollard from Little Britain).

There is a certain deep seeded hatred emanating from his soul whenever Jamie speaks about chicken nugs

I have family in WV, and while I grew up elsewhere, I attended Marshall University in Huntington WV *right* after Oliver's "White Saviour" episode. The city's atmosphere was... Dark amusement, and full of Appalachia's classically nihilist humour. If memory serves, a few local restaurants actually started offering a "Jamie Oliver" special, which was always chicken and/or something he'd call unhealthy (e.g., 3 pieces deep fried dark meat chicken [no substitution to chicken breasts allowed] and a pie whose crust was made with lard). As a side note, not only is life there financially hard - Huntington is a dead end with zero chance for advancement, and everyone there knows that - anyone at Marshall who knew farmers would rant how Oliver discarding half of an animal who died for his nutrition was just... *cruel* .

Is it weird that seeing chicken nuggets made of the “leftovers” makes me *happier* about eating them? I’m not a vegetarian, but I do believe they have a point about reducing the number of animals we kill for food, and eating the “low quality” bits means fewer birds killed per chicken dinner. I think this is a moral positive!

“Im not saying Jamie Oliver is classist” *cuts to him being extremely classist*

Not even getting into the infuriating concept of "clean" food & how mad it makes me every time I drive past a Panera billboard, some people on this earth just aren't capable of realizing that "it takes 45 minutes of active time to make literally tuna melts without turning the kitchen into an unusable warzone" is a true statement & not everyone has 45 minutes and clean dishes and energy to spare. This video rocks.

I'm an adult and don't particularly like chicken nuggets but that demonstration just makes me feel like chicken nuggets are actually a good tool against food waste by using the less desirable parts of the chicken.

"who would still eat this?" 'all the children know they're supposed to say no from context clues' 'the one kid in the middle that just really likes chicken nuggets raises hand' 'Jamie's grip on the children is lost as they all begin to raise their hands'

The part about Jamie Oliver demonizing "poor people food" is common to all British TV cooking in my experience. Even when it's not complete cottagecore fantasy stuff like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's _River Cottage_ shows they'll always go "the best thing about this meal is it's easy, simple and cheap. First things first, go to your orchard. Now I know not all of you will have your own orchard, so just pop down the road to your neighbourhood's _communal_ orchard."

"I wanna show them what's in their fuckin' nuggs" Imagine being this petty

Oliver could campaign to make cheap and easy food good, or he could campaign to make good food cheaper and easier. He does neither. He improves nothing for anyone. He just makes people feel shamed for eating what they can afford, and yes, like.

Elementary school teacher: "Although they hunted extensively for food, Native Americans used every part of the animal, leaving no waste like we do today." Jamie Oliver: "Disgusting, just bloody disgusting, there's perhaps 10 pounds of useful meat on a buffalo AT MOST."

It’s not the shape that’s friendly, Jamie. It’s the breading. Breadcrumbs are my best friend.

I've watched this so many times now, but I've only just noticed the transition from "Stop. Eating. Dirty. Nuggets." to cleaning up all the "dirty" dishes from the "clean" nuggets.

Jamie Oliver is like Jake Paul of the food world. You know his name, you know he's big and influential, but watching literally anything he puts out makes you wonder how and why.