By Rori Harrington Those who say social media is a waste of time or that twitter is for attention-starved people with nothing better to do should take a look at the work of a certain celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, and hundreds of thousands of others who are on a mission to fight obesity and change the way America feeds children.  Social media is playing a big role in their campaign.

Oliver has taken the web by storm with his cause, urging his more than 400,000 twitter followers to sign an online petition to bring healthier food to schools.  More than half a million people have signed the petition as part of Oliver’s Food Revolution.

More than 3,000 people have added Food Revolution Twibbons and Twibbon stickers to their twitter photos and Facebook pages in support of the movement.

ABC’s six-part series “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” documented the chef’s journey to help Huntington, W.V., find ways to serve healthful meals in public schools. Huntington was chosen after being pegged as one of America’s unhealthiest cities.  This generation of Americans is the first expected to have a shorter life-span than their parents, according to the series.

In the U.K., Oliver’s efforts lead to improve school meals which then lead to a complete overhaul of the school dinner program. His work in the U.S. is focused on giving young people healthy options and teaching the community to cook healthy meals.

This is a great story showing how the population at large is hungry to be involved-in a proactive and healthy way- with the social media sphere.

Thanks for reading-

Rori

Resources:

http://abc.go.com/shows/jamie-olivers-food-revolution

http://www.jamieoliver.com/campaigns/jamies-food-revolution/petition