Jamie Oliver Reveals His TED Wish: Healthy Food, Home Cooking, and Obesity Education

"I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity".

There it is in one simple sentence. Jamie Oliver's TED wish encapsulates everything that I have been writing about since I started writing for TreeHugger and Planet Green. It is at once a brilliantly simple wish and devilishly difficult to achieve. You only have to look in the shopping carts of the people in line in the grocery store to realize that not only do most people not cook fresh, healthy food, but they are stuffing their kids full of junk that is actively harming them.

In Mr. Oliver's TED talk last night, delivered at breakneck speed as he whirled about the stage, he talked about bad diets contributing to rising health costs and to a decreased life span, but also had some concrete ideas about how to remedy this sad situation. To my mind, the most important point he made was about educating young children about food and cooking. As one audience member pointed out after the talk, children were the driving force behind the use of seat belts and the movement to stop smoking.

Some important points were:

- Teach children 10 recipes by the time they graduate school "to save their lives".

- Create food labelling that acurately reflects what is in the product and warns consumers of unhealthy foods.

- Food companies should make education a central part of their business.

- Supermarkets should create "food ambassadors" within their stores to help shoppers choose healthy foods, and give them suggestions and guidance about food preparations.

It remains to be seen what will actually come of all of this, but watching the indefatigable Oliver say to the elite TED audience, "I know it's weird having a British person here talking about this, but I care", was quite moving, and one can only hope that his spirit will be infectious and will make everyone else care too.

Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food

It's worth the 18 minutes.