Articles by Tom Philpott
Tom Philpott was previously Grist's food writer. He now writes for Mother Jones.
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‘Naked Chef’ dresses down U.S. school lunches, demands ‘real food,
Ten years after sustainable-food doyenne Alice Waters launched her innovative Edible Schoolyard program in Berkeley, U.S. school lunches remain abysmal. In cafeteria kitchens throughout the land, de-skilled workers busy themselves opening cans and zapping pre-made meals in giant microwaves. Out on the floor, kids swill soda and dig their little hands into bags of fried stuff that may have, somewhere far way, once resembled food.
Waters' effort remains laudable, but it's limited to one school. No public figure, no celebrity chef riding the waves of a Food Network show and the opening of an eponymous restaurant in Vegas, has bothered to make decent school lunches a national crusade.
Enter Jamie Oliver, the "Naked Chef" of U.K. TV and cookbook fame.
