Jamie Oliver: Obesity and Debt are Killing Britain
Radical with Amol Rajan
BBC
4.5 • 919 Ratings
🗓️ 11 December 2025
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jamie Oliver thinks diet-related illness and growing levels of debt are killing the country he loves. In this frank and open conversation, he tells Amol why we need to go further to help people understand the nutritional value of the food they eat. And although his campaign for the sugar tax brought significant change, Jamie says there is still more to do on school meals, breakfast clubs and food packaging.
But Jamie’s mission doesn’t stop at food. He wants children to be taught how to manage their money and he also sets out a case for reforming education so it better serves children with diverse ways of learning. Reflecting on his own dyslexia, he emphasises the importance of giving every child the support they need to thrive.
And following the announcement that Jamie’s Italian will return to the UK, Jamie reflects on what went wrong the first time and how he hopes to make the relaunch a success.
(00:01:42) Reflecting on the cultural shifts throughout his career
(00:06:12) What he thinks of the current state of Britain
(00:08:25) Sugar tax
(00:11:13) Junk food advertising
(00:13:50) What are we getting wrong with obesity?
(00:16:58) Decline in cooking
(00:19:39) School meals and breakfast club standards
(00:23:17) Neurodiversity
(00:28:30) How did dyslexia affect him as a child?
(00:31:00) Why we need to teach financial literacy to kids
(00:35:14) Jamie’s radical ideas
(00:39:15) The decline of British pubs
(00:43:10) Jamie’s Italian – why it failed and why he is bringing it back
(00:46:55) The ups and downs of fame
(00:52:37) Reflecting on his childhood
(00:55:52) Amol’s reflections
GET IN TOUCH * WhatsApp: 0330 123 9480 * Email: radical@bbc.co.uk Episodes of Radical with Amol Rajan are released every Thursday and Your Radical Questions, where you get to put questions to our guests, is released every Monday.
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@r4today
Watch on BBC iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002f1d0/radical-with-amol-rajan Amol Rajan is a presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He is also the host of University Challenge on BBC One. Before that, Amol was media editor at the BBC and editor at The Independent.
Radical with Amol Rajan is a Today Podcast. It was made by Lewis Vickers with Anna Budd. Digital production was by Gabriel Purcell-Davis. Technical production was by Mike Regaard. The editor is Sam Bonham. The executive producer is Owenna Griffiths.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:04.5 | Hello, it's Amol here. Welcome to Radical, conversations about the deep global trends, |
| 0:19.3 | changing our world and offering you some radical |
| 0:22.0 | ideas for the future. Jamie Oliver cares deeply about Britain. He is fiercely patriotic and has |
| 0:28.7 | been publicly for over 30 years. But he thinks two things are killing us as a country. Obesity, |
| 0:36.1 | or more specifically diet-related disease and debt. |
| 0:39.6 | When he came into the radical studio, he was in a pretty reflective mood. |
| 0:43.8 | He clearly wants to renew his campaigning and focus on those two huge issues of diet and debt, |
| 0:49.6 | but he's also just turned 50, and he's starting to see people he grew up with encounter ill health, which is why |
| 0:55.0 | he's written a new book called Eat Yourself Healthy. We talked about all of the good stuff, about how he |
| 1:00.9 | thinks we can help people with dyslexia, how he wants to reform schools, save our pubs, why he's |
| 1:05.9 | opening a new restaurant after a very public failure in business and also all the campaigns that he is |
| 1:12.0 | yet to win but still wants to fight. We talk about the state of Britain today compared to when |
| 1:16.6 | he found fame in the 1990s and what he thinks now needs to be done to improve our health |
| 1:23.3 | and our finances. You're younger. |
| 1:28.2 | How old are you? |
| 1:29.5 | Guess. |
| 1:30.5 | I would say, |
| 1:31.9 | 41. |
| 1:32.9 | Beautiful, man. |
| 1:33.8 | I take that I'm 42. |
| 1:35.0 | Yeah, you look super young. |
... |
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