London - After years campaigning for healthier school meals, Jamie Oliver is tackling his own health, after claiming to have adopted a new food and lifestyle regime designed to increase his energy and help him lose weight.
The 40-year-old TV chef, who has previously admitted surviving on just three and a half hours sleep a night, said he now goes to sleep at 10pm, has given up alcohol during the week and regularly eats seaweed, nuts, eggs and herbs.
“Sleep has become profoundly important to me,” he told the Radio Times. “I was never getting enough of it and I didn’t understand the value of it. And I treat it like work. Just like I do with little Buddy [his four-year-old son] when I tell him to get to bed, I get to bed! I have little vibrating things that shake me when it’s 10pm.”
He added: “Your average Brit drinks booze. I’m not telling you what to do, but my rhythm now is only to drink at the weekend. It’s about a consciousness and knowing you’re doing something and being more mindful.
“A handful of nuts a day will qualify you for three extra years on the planet! And they make you half as likely to have a heart attack. Feed them to your kids as well. Eggs are great and you can have them every day. Just don’t go bonkers. Swap them for meat in a meal.
“Grow herbs. Get herbs. Use herbs. Have them instead of salt. In processed food there’s a load of salt, but in fresh cooking you can replace it with herbs for seasoning.”
He added: “I thought seaweed was hippy, globetrotting stuff but our ancestors ate seaweed. It’s got a load of iodine and it’s the most nutritious vegetable in the world. I’m saying lose it in a minestrone because that stuff is really, really good for you. It’s like dynamite – fibre, nutrients, all the minerals, aids digestion – unbelievable.”
The star is fronting upcoming Channel 4 documentary Jamie’s Sugar Rush in which he investigate the role played by advertising campaigns for sugary foods and drinks, and the effect of diseases such as Type 2 diabetes.
According to the charity Diabetes UK more than 3.3 million people have the condition in some form, an increase of one million in a decade.
He has now called for preventative measures to reduce the rates of childhood obesity and has called for more to be done to tackle kids’ dental health and has urged the government to introduce a 7p “sugar tax” on cans of fizzy drink.
The star famously launched the Jamie’s School Dinners campaign in 2005 in a bid to improve the quality of food at Kidbrooke School in London. The campaign was extended nationally, with a focus on trying to remove processed food such as Turkey Twizzlers from school menus.
Oliver and his wife Jules have four children; Poppy, 12, Daisy, 11, Petal, five, and Buddy, four.
He said the couple regularly ban their own children from having fizzy drinks, saying: “My missus Jools is an amazing mom and we have never brought sugary sweetened drinks into our house. There is absolutely no need. I probably would offer one up on a special occasion or on a beach, but my missus wouldn’t have it. She’s way stricter than me so that rules that one out.”
He also says fruit juices are diluted because of the sugar content: “It’s not empty calories but it has got sugars and citric acid so it’ll be the same as pop for bad teeth.”
Oliver has previously admitted how difficult he finds it to lose weight while working in the food industry, but saying he visits the gym twice a week.
He said his poor health contributed to his belief he was heading for burnout if he continued living in the way he was.
He said he only realised how unhealthy he was when he started wearing a digital body tracker, which monitors sleep patterns, blood pressure and weight.
He said recently in a separate interview: “The most shocking thing was having it there spelled out for me that I was surviving on an average of three-and-a-half hours sleep a night.
“And I was just exhausted all the time. When I wasn’t at work I could fall asleep at a minute’s notice – not that I got the chance with the kids. At the weekend they want to play.”
Today, though, he seems bright-eyed. “I feel completely different now. I’ve lost weight. I make sure I get the right amount of sleep. I do the climbing trees thing. It’s a bit hippy, but it gives you your twinkle back. You want to feel… alive.”
Daily Mail