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2009-05-11 08:53:46
By James Hibberd James Hibberd 2 hrs 49 mins ago
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) ABC is teaming with British chef Jamie
Oliver and Ryan Seacrest for a new series that gives healthy makeovers to an
entire city.
Oliver will travel to the unhealthiest places in America and find ways to use
nearby resources to improve local eating habits. The network has ordered six
hours of the project from Ryan Seacrest Productions.
The series is loosely inspired on Oliver's acclaimed school lunch project in
the U.K., where the chef set about to improve kids' nutrition. His effort to
improve one school's offerings, documented in the 2005 series "Jamie's School
Dinners," shamed educators into passing new measures to ban certain junk foods.
Seacrest said he talked about school lunches during a segment on his KISS-FM
morning radio show in Los Angeles and was struck by the amount of listener
response. Then he heard Oliver was looking to bring his public service campaign
stateside. The resulting ABC show will not only tackle a city's schools, but
workplaces and other avenues for change.
"I couldn't do what I do in terms of my schedule if I didn't eat right and
exercise right," Seacrest said. "As a kid I was chubby, and I'm a firm believer
that the fuel we put into our body results in a healthy lifestyle. Jamie's
going to come over here, roll up his sleeves and use the resources of each town
to help condition living habits to make it a better and healthier place."
Oliver previously appeared as a judge on ABC's successful one-off series
"Oprah's Big Give," where his personality impressed the network. Though health
and fitness reality genre (dominated by NBC's "The Biggest Loser") has proved a
tough nut for networks to crack, ABC's co-head of alternative series Vicki
Dummer points out that Oliver benefits from having successful experience doing
this sort of program in the UK.
"Jamie has been through this mission before," she said. "He will be an advocate
for change, but not act like, 'I'm from Britain and you Americans are fat.' I
think he's really equipped to make a change and knock on the right doors."
The target city hasn't yet been named, but it's expected to be a place that has
been cited on "fattest cities" lists. ABC expects to air the as-yet-untitled
show sometime next year.
(Editing by Dean Goodman)