Jamie's Food Revolution LA: The chef gets sidelined.

Jamie’s mission to bring healthy meals to LA’s schools was closed down on last night’s episode, as he celeb chef was told the LAUSD had forbidden him from competing with cafeteria food, despite his students making and serving 150 meals to paying pupils.

‘Letting you in was a quarter of the battle’, Mike from the school management told him. ‘You’re not allowed to compete with cafeteria food, film cafeteria food or sell alternative meals during school hours.’

‘It’s a massive fingers up’, replied Jamie.

‘It’s up to you now’, a tearful Jamie told Spanish speaking volunteer parents at a meeting, before embracing his role as a culinary educator at the school and teaching the pupils where food comes from.

His lesson was clearly overdue as most of the 17-year-olds failed an elementary level test, claiming butter comes from corn, cocoa from a chocolate river, I wish, and honey from a honey bear, and it was multiple choice answers.

To prove his point further, the chef held a science lesson showing the teens what ingredients are used in their favourite sweet treat, ice cream sundaes. Over 200 ingredients, he said were present in their desserts, including varnish from bugs to coat sweets, human hair and duck feathers to bind store bought ice-cream.

‘It’s a lesson they will remember’, said Jamie.

The chef also won over Deno, the fast food owner of Patra’s, who agreed to serve only Jamie’s meat patties in his restaurant in return for a makeover of the joint and a new fat reducing grill. He even got Deno a spot on Ryan Seacrest’s radio show to promote the new restaurant and burgers.

‘The real test is when Jamie isn’t here’, claimed Deno, who said his priority was running a business when he met with Jamie’s pupil Sophia, who told him how fast food restaurants are killing her family.

It was only when a local nursery approached Deno after a successful launch of the new restaurant, and told him how he is saving children in the area, that Deno really understood how powerful his decision was.

‘I’m going to push it (the burgers)’, Deno told Jamie. ‘I’m not going to pull the plug don’t worry.’

Next week Jamie has an even bigger fight on his hands, coming face to face with the president of the LAUSD. It could get messy?!

Jamie's Food Revolution: LA's Schools Board doesn't play ball

Jamie recruited a small army of kids on last night’s episode of the Food Revolution, in an attempt to get the LA Schools District on board, and allow him to make changes to school meals.

But despite making some allies, he was still refused entry to the city’s elementary schools. That is until he found a loophole in the system, a school owned by the LAUSD but run by contractors LMA, who welcomed him to the school, but warned him they needed results as going against the board could mean the school looses funding and they loose their jobs.

To keep the LAUSD sweet, the school made Jamie pose as a cookery teacher, giving him the chance to teach the children, half of which are obese, about the importance of eating good food. He shown a small group who take culinary skills how to make burritos and learnt that most of them fear becoming ill from being overweight. One girl, Sophia, told Jamie how her 13-year-old sister and parents have type 2 diabetes, and she worries she is next. Jamie’s plan- to get the group to act as his crusaders and come up with a healthy alternative to school meals.

However, the LAUSD got wind of his ideas and forbid him from talking to any of the children about school meals. Even peering through the window into the cafeteria Jamie got a telling off. ‘In the land of the free I can’t talk to children about the food they eat everyday. It makes me angry, and as Americans it should make you furious’, said Jamie.

The celeb chef’s luck didn’t improve when he made a return visit to see Deano, who runs a fast food restaurant. Jamie told the owner that he could double his takings, and asked for full control of the menu for two weeks.

‘Two weeks is too long’, claimed Deano. ‘I have a wife and kids. I’m concerned because you are English and wasn’t born in America. You don’t know what a milkshake is.’ Deano’s comment referred to last week when the chef adapted his milkshakes to make them healthier using yoghurt instead of ice-cream and fresh fruit instead of syrup, a drink which the fast food owner said was more like a smoothie.

In the end Deano agreed with Jamie to split the menu in half, the old originals vs Jamie’s three new healthier burgers with less than half the calories, and his lighter milkshake. All appeared to be going well, with the customers giving Jamie’s burger the thumbs up, until the chef posed as a customer and ordered a shake from the drive through, only to see Deano add ice-cream and syrup to his healthy milkshake.

‘I thought it needed something’, was Deano’s excuse.

And it seems next week Jamie is in for an even tougher time. Will the chef ever get a break?