Jamie Oliver: Obesity and Debt are Killing Britain

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0:49Hello, it's Amol here. Welcome to Radical. Conversations about the deep global trends changing our world and offering you some radical ideas for the future. Jamie Oliver cares deeply about Britain. He is fiercely patriotic and has been publicly for over 30 years. But he thinks two things are killing us as a country. Obesity, or more specifically diet-related disease, and debt. When he came into the radical studio, he was in a pretty reflective mood. He clearly wants to renew his campaigning and focus on those two huge issues of diet and debt. but he's also just turned 50 and he's starting to see people he grew up with encounter ill health which is why he's written a new book called Eat Yourself Healthy.

1:34We talked about all of the good stuff about how he thinks we can help people with dyslexia, how he wants to reform schools, save our pubs, why he's opening a new restaurant after a very public failure in business and also all the campaigns that he is yet to win but still wants to fight. We talk about the state of Britain today compared to when he found fame in the 1990s and what he thinks now needs to be done to improve our health and our finances. You're younger than me. How old are you? Guess. I would say 41. Beautiful, man. I take that. I'm 42. Yeah, you look super young. Yeah. An incredible just general...

2:14You're a decade behind me. So yeah, it's interesting. I found each decade quite fascinating, actually have you found as a young man you know because in your 20s like no one trusts or believes you so all your energy is like fight or flight prove prove prove and then i remember like on my 30th birthday i don't think i'm exaggerating like everyone just started to believe me and then sort of two months into that which was wicked because everyone believed me you know believed the things i was saying um i was kind of working out that half of what i say is not great so like you know please don't believe me like please interrogate me so that energy of like proving to them being believed and then in your 40s you're just trying to like get your groove and get that balance and then now in my 50s um it's kind of like well what does that what does good look like um you had an unusual you can't necessarily i mean i'm sure there's some things that you've experienced which kind of universal obviously but you had a very unusual 20s because you were what 22 when you went from being you know sous chef to antonio carluccio to the naked chef selling 10 trillion copies yeah and also you've got this unusual thing which is that you've been famous for a very long time so you must i've been famous for more years than i haven't now do you look back at your the footage of yourself back then ever i mean even if you don't search it i have recently yeah how did you find the 50s bring on the nostalgia and the kind of retrospective um yeah it's mad i mean i'm just like a set of lips going around on a little scrawny body like oh like my my voice is different it's higher um you're even more essex i'm more cockney yeah and um and uh yeah i could just hear the kind of the youth in me energy um yeah i mean it's sort of beautiful in a way because i i was very blessed because um you know uh whilst things didn't go so well at school like in the kitchen at the weekends for pocket money i was able to sort of like gather um a lot of professional skills from a very unusual age i started cooking really at 10 for pocket money and by the time i was sort of like 16 i'd been on rotation around the kitchen multiple times this is in your so it's like these little you know they always sort of said when they sort of commissioned the naked chef at the bbc they're like you know there were these old hands in this sort of young body if you look back at the old tear sheets of the naked chef and how it broke how i broke to fame i mean it was largely driven by quite you know high profile female journalists in female press typically i'm generalizing a little bit yeah yeah but it was but it was all about getting men in the kitchen because men and women around the country were putting in a shift and as they got home at six seven o 'clock at night men all around the country said what's for dinner darling and then i'm on telly chirping about you know spinning down a spiral staircase going around town on a scooter sort of knocking up a little meal here and there and what blatantly happened was women said well why don't you ever go like him do you know what i mean never thought about that but so it was partly a social phenomenon to get men to stop thinking i'm going to come home and demand what's on my plate for dinner but actually get if you want to if you want it why don't you get in the kitchen because this guy that was definitely the energy and and certainly if you spoke to people like you know zoe ball Joe Wiley they you know that's when I was going on their shows back in the early days and that was definitely the energy and it was about getting men in the kitchen I mean it wasn't as I guess politicized as I'm saying but essentially without trying to be there was a kind of presumption that women would put a shift in they would go to work and they would be great wives or partners and they would also do the house cleaning and chores and cooking and of course maker chef happened around the time where kind of mutuality started to be the norm and it's funny you mentioned 1997 because although you you say you got the back end of it and you're very young you're a late teenager or maybe early 20s it was an optimistic time in britain the millennium was coming i've actually chatted quite a lot to tony blair about this and tony blair got you into cook lunch in number 10 but it was a time of economic growth it was a time of relative peace it was a time of a new government after 18 years of conservatives and the zeitgeist was kind of optimistic how would you describe it i know you're a big patriot how would you describe the kind of zeitgeist right now a bit more anxious maybe listen i think we've had um we've had nearly a decade of of divisive activities that make people neighbors families look at each other uh in exaggerated judgmental ways brexit was the first you know i think that split families across the country and then we have covid um which again very unusual moment for humans weird um and um and the generation of kids that you know companies like tiktok and zoom were were born in in lockdown and if you you know my one of my passions whether you see it as a public profile or not is i'm obsessed by quite nerdy data around public health child health human health of course mainly british but but absolutely global as well and um you know covid was terrible for for for child health in britain and um we got iller um more unhealthy more fat you know more eating disorders i mean it's just a plethora of problems so um lots of people don't know or wouldn't believe but in the at the the The nuclei of my business is if you come to my office, there's a graph that I printed and I did it in gold foil to make it look graphically more beautiful because it's just hard data.

7:50But it's from the National Child Measurement Program. And it just shows you how rich kids are more than two times less likely to be overweight or obese than poor kids. And for me, that defines exactly why I get up in the morning. So you can tell, yeah, but you sell pots and pans. It's like, yeah, but like with purpose. You did it with content. And that actual frame I also gave to Mr. I've taken to prime ministers. So Cameron, I gave that exact graph to and put it in a little secondhand vintage frame to go with number 10. And actually I came back several times thereafter. I was the only civilian in a room with ministers trying to build the beginnings of a childhood obesity strategy.

8:35I'm sure you know this, but George Osborne, former chancellor who has a very good podcast with Ed Balls called Political Currency, has talked a lot about how the sugar tax is one of his proudest achievements, partly because it came up against a lot of opposition. And he's actually told the story a few times on that podcast, which I didn't know beforehand, of how basically to get the sugar tax over the line, I'm not saying it wouldn't have happened with you and did with you and you were the decisive difference. But he said basically the big thing was I, George Osborne, rang up Jamie Oliver and said, look, mate, I need some support here.

9:05and he's always been very gushing about how you came out to bat and you took a lot of flack for that, didn't you? Yeah, for sure. At the time, people said the sugar tax was completely, you know, bonkers. What's so interesting now is we're talking shortly after a budget where, in effect, that sugar tax has not just been accepted but extended to a lot of people. I mean, there's basically a consensus around the fact that you need a sugar tax. Yeah, I mean, I think whenever you're talking to the public about the concept of tax, it's never going to bring out, like, warm emotions. So the hard job that we landed there was it was a tax for good.

9:35Well, what does that look like? So so what we have, but but legislation and taxes, along with many other things that you can do in government and in my opinion, the point of government is to kind of create rules or a fair playing field. Right. In the world of business and home and Britain. Right. So what's happened in food for many, many years is it's just the Wild West. so just the concept of truth on front of pack we haven't even nailed that yet we're that behind we haven't even agreed like a nutritional profile color coding on the front of pack we're allowed to say that something really is high in iron and zinc but yet is like like super unhealthy and got more than a day's amount of sugar in something so if you like the most honest thing in your life is a piece of cake because it's never lied to you and when you go for the second slice you know exactly the score.

10:24Have one, don't have one, but it's never lied to you. You go down the breakfast aisle and it's just a pack of lies. It's cake. But are you saying that food packaging in the UK is rubbish? Yeah, it's rubbish. If you're looking at British kids being some of the most unhealthy kids in Europe, right, and if you put a value to that from a mental health point of view and from a productivity of young adults going into their first jobs. And the social justice point of view because it affects poor people more than rich. And of course social mobility and of course poor kids are massively marketed to more junk food than rich kids so definitely postcode wars for sure but um yeah we i mean we there's the whole point of legislation and the concepts of tax are to create a fair playing field and rules like come sell your stuff bless do your thing but there are rules it's not the wild west i thought i thought there were rules well there are rules but you need the right rules and it's it's not but it's not like a kind of standstill binary thing it's like rules are a moving target so obviously if you've got some of the most unhealthy kids in europe then you would say in a kind of fatherly motherly government like you know public health uh hat on you'd say well maybe we need some regulations on advertising to big family shows right isn't there an advertising standards authority yeah so we've been campaigning for 10 years so we're just about to get it over the line but that's 10 years later and even that was 10 years late so um and of course everyone could say well no one watches tv anymore because it's all gaming and it's all tv and it's all youtube and this and the other but also sometimes in campaigning you have to do things that are symbolic because really if you do it if you legislate that for say tv which is fair right and righteous um also naturally the conversation about other means of of sharing broadcasting content uh will follow which i i i agree in but i mean ultimately what's interesting is every time i've done something uh contrary to uh people's initial unscientific belief is they think it's uncommercial so when when we work with the mayor to put junk food regulation around advertising in tfl which is the second biggest advertising in the world no one really realizes that transport for london yeah yeah tfl is the biggest second biggest advertising real estate on the planet because most of it's broken up into little bits, right?

12:45And it's a big old deal. They created regulations. That stimulates more R &D in these big multiples that advertise their junk food. Then they have more choice. Then you have more healthy options. You can still buy the thing that you love, but you've got more choice. So just to spell out... But more importantly, they made more money that year and the year after. So they keep saying that doing good is bad business, but doing good, I believe, is good business. And the sugary drinks tax also did that. They made more money that year and every year after because what it did is it stimulated more choice in the portfolio of drinks, more milk, more water, more fruit juice.

13:23So people buying different things, just not buying the sugar stuff. So I was never saying you can't have something. What I was saying was, we've got 28 ,000 kids going under general anesthetic to have multiple teeth extractions, which is like six, seven, eight, nine, ten teeth out, you know. And these departments that are dealing with this typically do facial rebuilding and cancer and trauma. And they're doing multiple teeth extractions. And it's only, only because of sugar. When it comes to the nation's health and kids, particularly on the issue of food and obesity, what is the problem? Just spell out what are we getting wrong as a country and as a society?

14:02um well um obesity is a kind of it's a kind of it's kind of i don't really like the word but it's it's really a load of disorders and diseases really but if we're saying ill health diet related ill health in britain for everyone but let's just focus on kids because that i believe sort of matters because that's the future and that's hope um obesity is a normal reaction to an abnormal environment end of story mic drop right so what does that mean um it means that your children aren't genetically born to only crave and want nuggets and burgers it's called marketing marketing works it's not charity um it's called familiarity and trust that's the essence of marketing um and frequency obviously so what's happening is um our world has changed you know we were we were at our most healthiest i don't know like three years after rationing and and now we're at our most unhealthy um but like my sort of my obsession and love for my job and the bit the bits that you don't see which are the most exciting bits which are the kind of social campaigning elements which is about general health of british families it's not just about we keep we always focus on weight and that that is a marker of obesity and then you can look at diet related disease and health and a huge proportion of who goes through the nhs is there for diet related reasons but but but it gets even more interesting when you start looking at mental health suicide um um just um absenteeism from school work bigger more clever concepts of like um the economy and productivity for britain you know i spend my life traveling you know i publish broadcast in like 80 to 120 countries around the world like i'm blessed to have learned and seen from people and cultures and all this sort of stuff we are a tiny little country we are a tiny little country like punching pretty hard you know and of all the countries in the world like i think we're number 14 for tourism it's like really and it's like like we do amazingly well but it does require our little island to have um that energy that we referred to earlier of call britannia like hope excitement collaboration positivity and drive it's really important because a lot of what we do is about innovation media services and although some of those services are like banking technical services but i still believe like innovations at the heart of that so we're i i'm always proud to come home like i love britain i really love it i'm always really and for everything bad that's said about it whenever i come home i'm i genuinely have like reference points to go So, but we do, we're not perfect, but we do an amazing job of that.

16:50So whether it's kind of racism or whether it's the way we treat people, laws that protect people, you know, like there's so much to be proud of. But I think all we've heard for about six years is how rubbish we are. It's the negativity, exactly. Listen, like when you're told you're rubbish all the time, you start to believe it. You start to believe it. I want to talk about that in two contexts. One is about young people. And just on this thing about health, is one of the problems that there's been such a sharp decline in cooking. so it's really interesting what you say about how i never thought that one of the reasons the naked chef was a kind of dare i say a radical idea was what about if men did the cooking but i read somewhere that when you did that program a survey suggested that in most houses in britain the average amount of time people would do cooking was something like 45 or 46 minutes correct and a few years ago round about the pandemic they did the same sort of survey survey and it basically halved yeah 21 so the long to 21 minutes so the trend in cooking yeah is for us within our family environments to cook less why is that i mean confidence see the thing is like again and i and i i'm the most feminist person you're going to meet i've got three daughters like i'm all over it like a rat but but like if you can just stand back and be more galactic about what's happened in the last 40 years you know we the truths in empowering women have to be really debated and so we've happily encouraged them to work rightfully given them more choices and there's work to be done rightfully and they're taxed exactly the same as men so the coffers have got bigger because of our girls so i think for all of us but particularly the mothers like what has been strategically invested knowing what has been left behind right so like you don't cook if you haven't got confidence and the confidence always came from home grandmas like families that live closer together which is less common now for various reasons um mum um so if you're not learning to cook we're like four generations into not learning to cook at home or at school so what would be honorable to ladies there's a long list but you know so maternity paternity like it's such a mess in this country it's disgusting how we treat our girls uh and men actually um but also like things like having the poorest kids having like a safe and decent breakfast and lunch 190 days the year from the age of four to 16 which is half a kid's nutrition for the whole of their childhood that the state is in charge of.

19:27You know what I mean? Lots of debate in bad health in the world are because you have personal choice and the word you have personal choice is so empowering and right. And yeah, hell yeah, right? But when you're going somewhere 190 days a year and the state is in charge of it, it best be all right. It can't be bad. It can't make people sicker. So Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, who grew up in poverty in a place called Washington near Sunderland in the northeast of England, has made a big, big deal of school breakfast clubs and they've put a lot of money into it and they've invested hard.

20:03And I interview her a lot on the Today programme and I could always see on the... She can't see me, but I can see her. And she sort of has this beaming smile when she talks about it. She's enormously proud of it. Yeah, she should be. Don't you think that's made a big difference? No, it's good. It's good. Look, Bridget and this lot, for anything around, I'm apolitical, so don't think I'm one or the other. No, no, I've been apolitical since I've started campaigning. And my job is to sort of listen to all and try and make whoever's in power do better. But look, this lot have done a better job on joining the dots, but we're still trying to get packaging over the line.

20:39We're still trying to get like the banning of sale of energy drinks to under 16 year olds, which is a huge story that no one talks about because it affects the classroom so much in secondary schools like basically what are the things you're campaigning for you've not gotten yet so you're trying to do what you're trying to get 60 certain drinks let me just rewind Bridget well done met her quite a few times she's great but we need to do more but and and she should be proud but and having breakfast clubs is really important for kids particularly the 1.2 million kids that are on free school lunches not an include not including others that are in sort of universal credit, but there's no standards for breakfast.

21:15So we now provide the breakfast, right? But I can guarantee you, nine out of 10 will be an unhealthy breakfast. So there's no standards for it. Nine out of 10. So I can get, there are no standards for these free breakfasts in London, in Britain, right? So my point is, is thank you for making, thank you for giving our kids access, our most vulnerable kids access to a breakfast. Thank you. And contextually, anything is better than nothing. But if you've got some of the most unhealthy kids in Europe, and if you can associate that with productivity and mental health, then all you have to do is let the talented people within your orbit have standards, then procurement changes.

21:54And when you're ordering at a civic level like our 24 ,000 schools or 33 ,000 schools, if you want to talk about secondary schools as well and special schools, like just having standards starts to completely change commercial companies that have to deliver product that fits in. So it's not nothing's binary. When you have standards, laws or taxes, the ripples of good are far and wide. But forgive my ignorance. Why have they not done that already? It sounds like an obvious. Because the level of ninja granular obsession for getting a good job done and spending taxpayers money with a real, it's not just doing good.

22:29It's being like proficient, efficient and making kids optimal. So all the work that we have standards, we've had standards since I did the documentary for school lunches and the standards need updating, but they're good, but they need updating and they're being updated as we speak. But no one checks on them. so because there's no compliance checks i don't i can't promise you how much better we are than we were now i know that we are and i can give you some guesses right but what i can't if we don't know who's not complying then we can't deploy love care attention technology equipment or training so it's just the granular obsession for just feeding our kids yeah it's like seven million kids like we're knocking out around about an average of 640 000 students a year are coming out of education and the question are the question is is are they coming out in better nick than when they went in and the data says no but if you're talking about obviously i know the story of the kids that are out of education um and and and you mentioned ill health um but but also a lot of neurodiverse kids that that get expelled will be in in this category as well so i have permission to talk about some of this but all all i can say is um do you mean that because of your dyslexia yeah yeah yeah and i and i think you know like if you're looking at 25 of the average class is neurodiverse you know in some way shape or form um um we know for a fact that you know it's not luck that an average of five to fifteen percent of kids are dyslexic in your average class and 65 percent in jail like it's not luck so i look this up this is this is true to say that so this 6.3 million people in the uk have dyslexia around about 10 percent of the population and estimates vary lots of different people got different numbers on it but it could be up to 50 or 60 as you say of people in jail are dyslexic i found that absolutely astonishing to discover and i've been in i've got a boy with it now but i've got a big interest in youth justice i actually co-founded at a charity that tried to help kids from screwed up backgrounds a bit like you did.

24:35And the crossover between young people in the criminal justice system and often undiagnosed or unrecognized neurodiversity is absolutely astonishing. I went to this young offenders home in Kent for the Today program a few months ago. These guys in there for, I think I can say this. They're in there for, let's put it this way. They're in there for the worst crime a human can commit. Sometimes they've done it twice. They all had ADHD and they hadn't been told about it. And I'm not saying that ADHD causes you to kill someone, but these were huge issues. And it feels to me like we've made some progress on this.

25:07Bridget Phillips would say she's putting a lot of money behind send. In the budget recently, there was actually this whole thing about transferring responsibility for special educational needs from local councils to central government. And I actually interviewed Bridget Phillips. And I asked her whether or not this six billion pound funding black hole would come from the school's budget. She said, definitely not. So it feels like it's progress. But the fact is there is an extraordinary crossover or correlation, not necessarily causation, but correlation between neurodiversity and people, especially young people, ending up in bad situations.

25:38Yeah, 100 percent. There's so much to say about this. I mean, when I said obesity and diet-related disease is a normal response to an abnormal environment, like dyslexia and neurodiversity, like over-indexing in jail, suicide, mental health, underachieving in school, earning less than average wage. You know, obviously, conversely, ironically, 30 % of those happen to be entrepreneurs and do incredible things, but they're the kind of ones that escape. When you talk to neuroscientists about neurodiversity, because people get wound up about this because they think it's a load of old rubbish in my day.

26:14They didn't really do it. It's very generational how we talk and accept this whole conversation. But ultimately, it's quite satisfying to hear someone that does this for a living going, these are not disabled brains. These are different brains. They've always been different. Any of us are only standing here because of different brains. Nature requires different thinkers, problem solvers. And in the old world, you know, what about in the old days? In the old days, like those kids would find jobs that they were brilliant at. The institution of school has only been this specific for a very, very tiny moment in time.

26:48So this 25 % of kids that are slipping through the cracks is a man-made problem. The percentage of these kids in jail is a man-made problem. Just like I said, obesity and diet-related disease is a normal response to an abnormal environment. These statistics on neurodiverse kids with connotations of jail, suicide, this, that and the other is a normal response to an uninclusive education system. I can promise you that the anger, frustration, behavior, self-loathing, hatred, this, that and the other that is defined in this subject is created around the age of eight to 11. is that little of a personal experience yeah of course little beautiful kids beautiful kids feeling or being told that they're thick stupid or dumb so it's like you know it's like there's not one or two it's like you just did the numbers right six million in britain right now right so so so like that kid was that kid and um the reason they get expelled more is because they have to defend themselves more physically right uh picked on stupid dumb thick oh you know like i was like do you want to go to special needs now like you know and i i was fine listen i i my story isn't like i was confident enough and um robust enough to not get bullied and it wasn't a problem but I can see and I saw how it was terrible for others.

28:25So in actual fact, my story obviously is not a sad story, but I get it. I get it. You don't even have to caveat it, but I want to know how did that experience of being dyslexic, and by the way, this is a time, what, 40 odd years ago when it wasn't understood like it is now. Sometimes it was dismissed. There wasn't the same provision for special educational needs. How did your dyslexia shape your character as a boy? Well, I think luckily for me, I had two things that I adored. One was music. So I spent all of my youth just playing drums and in a band and that was beautiful and working a lot, probably illegally in my mum and dad's amazing pub restaurant.

29:06That was a legitimate sort of almost French structured kitchen with like six, seven chefs on a shift. so um i kind of i i wrote myself off in education early and just really turned up to youth club right i didn't really get into trouble um no one really caught me um but um school couldn't do what it needed to do it didn't fill me up right but what did fill me up and what was my school was the kitchen um so i was able and if you talk to a lot of people that have like struggles in school or particularly neurodiversity, it's often like a hobby or a job or a little something that they were brilliant at that sort of saved them.

29:47But most don't find that until they're in their 20s or 30s. And the damage might have been done by then. Hence the 30 % entrepreneurs versus 70 % that are earning less than the average wage. Did it affect your confidence with maths? Yes and no. Like, yes, in the sense of like, oh my goodness. um so like like maths as it's taught i mean my my brain on maths is unusual like statistics and sort of like top line i'm quite ninja at but what's taught in school i'm rubbish at so like in in a slightly like i i had um i had like a a parent message me and just say look my kids really not done very well in GCSEs and absolutely beside herself I said right I'll do a little video so I just did a little video around my office and just said look this is my office like these people are all really good at things I'm bad at good for you like like so this person does this I'm bad at that this person does that but I'm bad at that and then I just tried to talk to her about well what I'm good at is this and all these people like we all believe in something together and they will help me so really you just gotta find it's really fine to be bad at something But why I'm interested in why you're, there's two reasons I ask it.

31:03One, because I know you've got a passion for teaching financial literacy to kids. I think you sort of, you feel the kids don't really get told enough about how to deal with money. And a lot of, frankly, richer people like me and you, people in the media, don't realise the extent to which a lot of Britain is drowning in debt. I've got some numbers here. Just before you do that, so the two things that I think are like killing us from our core is diet-related disease and debt. Right? And that's why I asked... Who's the... Martin Lewis? Yeah, I got Martin Lewis in the episode. How did I know you were thinking of him as Martin Lewis?

31:42Because there's only one, right? And he's a machine. Arguably the most influential journalist in Britain. What would a modern-day expression of home economics look like that was cool and contemporary? And I'm like, dude, why couldn't you give a kid a grand at the beginning of school? And they learn about compound investment and debt and how to manage money and the idea of growing that. I'm obsessed with this subject. That is a radical idea. Can I tell you something? He said it wasn't because it was only just a couple of years ago that there was 700 quid that every child was owed through some other system.

32:10Didn't Gordon Brown have a scheme a bit like that? The Child Trust Fund or something like that? And it's only just stopped. So he goes, you're not too far away from the truth. Imagine starting in first year and graduating at fifth year and you've learned about investments, your pension fund. And that's why when I was talking to Martin, and I'm like, dude, we don't have to teach them loads of cooking, just 10 recipes to save your life. And that expression of that voluntarily has been accepted into nearly a quarter of secondary schools, but we want the government to push it so every child, every child.

32:41And teaching about investment. And imagine 10 recipes to save your life, but for actual investment. And the idea of compound interest, because we're not taught about it. Obviously, I've spent 20 years in journalism, I know about it, but the idea that you could teach an 18-year-old and say, first of all, look, you've got to have your living expenses, you've got to make sure you've got enough to last for three or six months you never want to be hungry got to look after people that you love and all the rest of it but if you've got a spare bit of money 20 quid a week 30 quid a week whatever you put it away and compound you've got this huge advantage if you're young which is you've got something that old people don't have which is time and with compound interest exactly they're young they've got time learn the basics if you look it's very fascinating if you look at how the poorest people because one of the things that's fundamental to just as far as fairness is concerned and and in my expression like the concept of britain right the concept not the reality um if you put your head down anything's possible no matter where you come from anything's possible i've been around hundreds of primary schools in britain and i'm glad to say that the energy i get from the head teachers is the sky is the limit now so i love that and it should be that but but the reality is there is invisible things that block that and some of it's not luck and it's nearly nearly always not luck the poorest people often consume buy things that are the most expensive expression of a product yeah or they borrow money at very high interest and they're the people who can't afford the interest rate when you burn you but what i'm saying is they're not buying raw ingredients they're buying brands just like they're buying like putting money in the meter so if you're looking at how they're consuming carbohydrates and veg it's the most expensive way to do it so this we can teach this we can empower when i've learned the best recipes in the world they've never been from posh rich people they've been from working class people that struggle with money generally but live like kings because why because they can shop so this idea of nutritional and financial literacy equivalents of 10 recipes to save your life you know you can retrain a generation imagine that that's why i believe that there's so much more opportunity with education 190 days of the year we've got these kids it's a it's it's technically a safe environment let's have a radical idea what are you going to do about this so you think that you've just said that you think dietary health and debt are the two things yes killing this country 100 right let's have an idea what can What are you suggesting?

35:09So on dietary health, you're talking about bans for under 16s to have certain sugars. I've got a long shopping list. Let's hear a bit of it. For those who don't know your campaign, what are you shopping for? My memory's bad, so forgive me. Maybe I'll voice over the stuff that I forget. But, I mean, look, none of this is impressive because this is, like, bog standard. I think it's honest and true front of pack, like, labelling, so you can help busy, hardworking consumers make good, quick decisions. Right. The data's around the back hidden in small, small text. Right. So we need to agree that we need junk food advertising controls on what's advertised on our biggest, most successful shows.

35:50So and of course, gaming tablets and where these big junk food brands get to your kids through their phones and their tablets. you know actually banning the sale of energy drinks to under 16 year olds if you've got three kids in a class on energy drinks for breakfast which is a normal breakfast for a proportion of britain unbelievably right um unbelievable talk to a teacher and they'll say i'll go from a plan a class to a plan b to a plan c so if you look like passive smoking at a class over a year is that class going to be cleverer and more productive or less and the answers are massive yet less so it's all these little tiny little things if you add them all together you can achieve and you can command a happier healthier more productive more opportunity more hopeful uh healthier britain and at the moment we're sort of dragging our feet with lethargic kind of flaccid uh behavior around how we protect families and kids what would you do better results what would you do on financial literacy you'd be chatting to martin lewis well martin lewis is the man but our job as adults in britain and therefore our governments should be to make sure that our kids are churned out at 16 or 18 but 16 um street wise and useful and and instead of this obsession with english and maths which is fine right but please get over yourselves really do you know what i mean like like we we we have to think there needs to be a total overhaul of how we support and structure education make it more inclusive um and and support the arts more and and uh and make our kids streetwise to the realities of what's happening in the street i really hope you're enjoying this conversation with Jamie Oliver.

37:46You can probably tell I'm enjoying it. I've always wanted to meet Jamie Oliver, but somehow, I mean, he's just an incredibly normal guy. I feel completely sort of like I'm in the presence of someone I've known for a very long time, maybe because he's been in my life for a very long time, but he's a remarkably unintimidating guy, which I think is to his credit. Listen, I want to ask for a couple of quick favours. One is, if you're enjoying this conversation and indeed any other episodes of Radical that you may have listened to, please do us a favor and subscribe. That way, if you subscribe and you make sure your push notifications are turned on, you will never miss a future episode, which will be very, very nice.

38:20You could become a fully fledged member of our club. And another little thing, which is that if you happen to listen to this podcast on one of those lovely apps where you get the chance to review or rate us, why don't you do it? Hit that little five star button, because if you do that, then it will help other people discover our work and our club can expand. And after all, that is something that we want, given how much hard work we're putting into this. Thank you so much for listening so far. And that's enough from me. Enough of the old special pleading. Back to Jamie Oliver. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed?

38:56In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

39:35I want to ask you about the pub, because you grew up in a pub. And since the turn of the century, you know, in the time, you know, Naked Chef was 1999. Since 2000, 15 ,000 pubs in the UK have shut. According to the British Beer and Pub Association, I was looking this up, 378 pubs were shut in England this year. That's 378 family businesses, maybe. That's 378 community. That doesn't sound like many. That's in a single year. That's up from 350 last year. That's more than one a day. you know just being realistic about these things what can you actually do to save our pubs you know you incentivize the sector our governments have been so hypocritical like every time the film industry film industry is a little bit down all of a sudden a wallet comes out and a load of tax breaks and the film industry is up again now do i care about pinewood and elstree and all the talent and all the craftsmen and all the gaffers and of course i do amazing people world class some of the best on the planet like but they do get special treatment so if you want of pubs because what so what pubs are dealing with is smoking ban supermarkets energy costs food price inflation then rising thing they've had nothing and it's not just pubs it's the whole it's hospitality one of the biggest employers in the country right the biggest employer on the planet is food right it's bigger than the one of the biggest grossing industry the biggest the mother of all industry beyond oil, arms, nuclear, you know, Bitcoin is food.

41:06And they've been hammered in the last few years.

41:12You have to allow me to beg for you to not think I'm biased because I'm in the industry. But the whole industry needs help to make them flourish and to want to do things because it's like torture at the moment. But also the government can't, from a tax point of view or any kind of point of view see the difference between like the most famous multiple of pizza chain and a small mum and pups restaurant that trains young kids does butchery buys from local local suppliers like they think they're the same industry they're not they're completely different one makes money like clockwork right and doesn't need to train to any kind of level and nothing's really going to go off very quick because it comes in like the supply chain is quite safe right and then you've got one over here that is really about culture it's about culture it's it's about like representing so it's not just the business it's not just allowing if there's so many things you could do to make restaurants or pubs flourish i mean vat you know national do you think do you think the ni rise and minimum wage rise of her of course but like but it if you want to have bust look the thing that makes a high street bustle is a couple of it is the food industry right and not estate agents with all due respect to estate agents many of whom will be listening now i'm sure and there's room for small big um small medium and big but really what's important is you need a lot you need it to be entry to industry like our next generation our mum and pups restaurants right which is not me right um but but like that they need all they're the spirit of britain right and the craft the level of technical craft what happens when you get hit with more and more taxes costs and it's business is harder right is you just have less people working in it and you you have to centralize procurement and you do less on site so the technical craft of cooking and smoking and butchering and and pickling and grilling like you know that like there's there's restaurants that you probably know of that don't even grill their own steaks anymore they grill it centrally put it in i don't even want to think about that and they regen it on site i mean it's like no chef ever invented that that's an accountant but having been through the ringer and having seen your incredible business which at some point must have had i think what you had 46 restaurants or so turnover of a billion you lost it all and you've spoken very movingly in the past about that it must be incredibly exciting to be coming back with a new jamie's italian yeah well you're probably the first give or take the first person have told um why are you doing it well when i started and people might listen to this oh yeah yeah yeah all i can do is tell you the truth when i started jr james italian um at its nuclei it was like how can i get high level ingredients into mid-market dining because that would normally be edited out and i can assure you the answer is yes i proved that seven eight years of incredible business um at training um like we didn't slosh that many staff our culture all the hard stuff i i did effortlessly and then all the kind of basics i got wrong what do you mean when you well like but essentially we i think long story short i think there was once we got going and it's not look it's not the bit that i did but we got arrogant about rents location we were going into sort of people bidding on a rent and we just bid more than everyone else and basically the geezer from Weatherspoons called it out.

44:46He goes, that ain't going to, that's not going to end well. You can't just walk around basically blasting everyone. And that's what I, that wasn't, I didn't sanction that. That wasn't, my culture was always humble, but I think we got cocky. We paid way too much for rents, two bigger restaurants. The rates that were then created by local government almost became like 40 % of rent. And then we had high street decline and the uberization of food that we weren't really uh geared up for so it was like the perfect storm and then i lost everything and it was like one of the worst things in my life ever awful it's like literally getting rogered from every angle like prolifically and you got it and fully in the press so i think that incredibly hard very really really hard and also like like the the food industries and is in my blood so i don't just care about myself i care about the whole industry um deeply and so um so there was a whole bunch of emotions from pride and but in the back of my mind all the hard stuff i've got right so i kind of like i think i've had like five years to heal but i also think that um and i'm not trying to be philosophical for any righteous purpose but i I think in the last 10 years, I've started to understand failure and get the power of getting things wrong.