TORONTO — Food that is healthy, energizing, filling and delicious — not trendy — is what families should be cooking every day, says Jamie Oliver.

The British celebrity chef, who is on a crusade to curb childhood obesity, is out with a new TV series and cookbook that encourages making good food choices.

“It’s weird, you kind of write books to answer the atmosphere at the moment and definitely, without doubt, a lot of my audience, including the Canadian audience, are kind of like, ‘Look, we just want to know what ‘good’ looks like. How do we make those things taste good? We’re not sure if they do taste good,'” Oliver said during a recent interview in Toronto.

In “Jamie’s Super Food Family Classics,” which airs Tuesdays starting on Nov. 15 on Gusto, he travels to Jeju in South Korea, Switzerland and Sardinia in Italy to see what locals are eating to keep them so healthy. Back in the U.K., he turns what he’s learned into his own meals and shares tips to ease the plight of busy home cooks.

“If you went to our fridge or freezer today it’s going to be riddled with that stuff, the little cheats about batch cooking and freezing, using the freezer as your best friend, because people are so busy,” Oliver said.

In the companion cookbook, published by HarperCollins, breakfast items like chocolate porridge, doughnuts and “pineapple pancake mess” come in at under 400 calories, while pastas, tray bakes, curries and stews max out at 600 calories per serving.

He also provides advice on food and nutrition, including his super-food philosophy on how to balance your plate and keep portions in check. In double-page spreads on “quirky little things you’d never think about,” he discusses chewing food well to reduce overeating, probiotics and prebiotics and their effect on the gut — “the next big thing in health” — and busts myths about sugar.

Oliver is no stranger to a hectic family life. He and his wife welcomed a fifth child in August.

“I genuinely do pinch myself and say, ‘what on Earth just happened,’ but of course we know what happened,” Oliver said.

“I genuinely thought I’d be: wife, two kids. I pictured myself living married life like my mom and dad did with two — but it’s five. It’s absolutely nuts. Beautiful, but nuts.”

The couple already had three girls — ages 14, 13 and seven — and a six-year-old son.

“We’re back at the beginning again. So I was out of nappies and all that business, but we’re back on it. Daddy Oliver is back in the house. School runs, just moving around. It’s literally like ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.'”

He said he tries to limit his travel for promotional duties nowadays, but admitted it gives him a chance for “getting really good sleep.”

“Even though I look tired, I did have a better sleep last night than I did this time last week, but don’t tell anyone. I keep telling (my wife), ‘Very hard going over here.'”

Oliver, 41, has also managed to fit in going back to school for an undergraduate degree in nutrition and is just over six months into a master’s program.

“It really kind of changed my life. It’s a bit like speaking Spanish and Italian but then studying Latin. I’m finding it so exciting and the kind of link with science and how you start to see food not just as a pleasure, but also fuel,” Oliver said.

While in Toronto, Oliver was also checking in on his two Canadian Jamie’s Italian restaurants, part of a chain with more than 60 locations worldwide. Oliver thinks there’s been a revolution in Canada’s food scene over the past few decades.

“Its makeup is based on wave after wave of immigration that gives it colour and texture. Cities have an incredible stretch of cultures and smells and tastes and flavours and when that comes out in food it’s a really, really beautiful thing,” he said.

“In my opinion, Canadian chefs seem to be really well trained. I think because of the way they’re growing up now they’re tasting and trying quite a lot of cuisines. I think they’re really curious and they’ve got the talent and the technique and the technology.”

 

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Lois Abraham, The Canadian Press