Jamie Oliver burst onto the world scene as a celebrity chef thanks to his “Naked Chef” TV series in the late 1990s, followed by other TV shows, successful books, endorsement deals with supermarkets, and an assault on school lunches, first in the UK and then in the US.
In late 2009, he won the 2010 TED Prize for his efforts to start a healthy food and eating revolution. His TED talk is here: http://bit.ly/cod9o3. In it, he makes a wish: that everyone will help him build a “strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again, and to fight obesity.” That wish brings him a standing ovation.
How does he get the standing ovation, and more importantly, how does he make the speech memorable? First, passion. Oliver sells his message with intensity from the very start. It shows up in bad ways as well as good. He’s got a bad case of happy feet, wasting too much energy wandering around the stage. His impact would be even greater if he choreographed himself more intelligently. And he oversells at the beginning, starting with a high pitch of outrage, rather than allowing himself to create an arc of emotion throughout his talk.
But he’s doing so much else well that we forgive him these faults. His passion is genuine and comes through in his body language, his voice, and his message. He begins with a great framing statistic: “In the length of time that it takes me to give this talk, 4 people will die from obesity.” That gets our attention, and from there he’s off to the races. Our children will live 10 years less than we will thanks to the lousy food we give them. Ouch. Diet-related disease is the biggest killer in the US in spite of the fact that it’s murder and mayhem that get the headlines. Ouch. Ten percent of our health expenditures right now are for obesity-related items, and that’s set to double in ten years. Ouch.
Second, the speech is a textbook example of a well-constructed persuasive speech in the problem-solution format. He begins with the hook, the compelling statistic, and then spends the next 12 minutes or so in the problem, showing clips, citing stats, and making arguments about how big a problem obesity is and how it’s killing our children. Then, it’s on to the solution in the remaining 8 minutes or so. And his prescriptions are specific. Supermarkets should put a ‘food ambassador’ in each store to help promote healthy alternatives. Schools should serve proper fresh food for lunch. And kids should be taught 10 recipes that will save their lives before they graduate. And so on.
This is persuasive speaking at its finest, in spite of Oliver’s very human flaws. He deserves the prize, and we should pay attention – on our feet.
In late 2009, he won the 2010 TED Prize for his efforts to start a healthy food and eating revolution. His TED talk is here: http://bit.ly/cod9o3. In it, he makes a wish: that everyone will help him build a “strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again, and to fight obesity.” That wish brings him a standing ovation.
How does he get the standing ovation, and more importantly, how does he make the speech memorable? First, passion. Oliver sells his message with intensity from the very start. It shows up in bad ways as well as good. He’s got a bad case of happy feet, wasting too much energy wandering around the stage. His impact would be even greater if he choreographed himself more intelligently. And he oversells at the beginning, starting with a high pitch of outrage, rather than allowing himself to create an arc of emotion throughout his talk.
But he’s doing so much else well that we forgive him these faults. His passion is genuine and comes through in his body language, his voice, and his message. He begins with a great framing statistic: “In the length of time that it takes me to give this talk, 4 people will die from obesity.” That gets our attention, and from there he’s off to the races. Our children will live 10 years less than we will thanks to the lousy food we give them. Ouch. Diet-related disease is the biggest killer in the US in spite of the fact that it’s murder and mayhem that get the headlines. Ouch. Ten percent of our health expenditures right now are for obesity-related items, and that’s set to double in ten years. Ouch.
Second, the speech is a textbook example of a well-constructed persuasive speech in the problem-solution format. He begins with the hook, the compelling statistic, and then spends the next 12 minutes or so in the problem, showing clips, citing stats, and making arguments about how big a problem obesity is and how it’s killing our children. Then, it’s on to the solution in the remaining 8 minutes or so. And his prescriptions are specific. Supermarkets should put a ‘food ambassador’ in each store to help promote healthy alternatives. Schools should serve proper fresh food for lunch. And kids should be taught 10 recipes that will save their lives before they graduate. And so on.
This is persuasive speaking at its finest, in spite of Oliver’s very human flaws. He deserves the prize, and we should pay attention – on our feet.
We would certainly want to have some slack in the food system so that unexpected drops in production in a particular region can be compensated by production from other regions.
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