Check out Jamie Oliver every Monday night on TLC. In Jamie’s School Lunch Project Jamie Oliver is out to improve the school lunches for kids across the UK. In one amazing bit, Jamie asks the kids to identify a number of veggies. They struggle and can hardly name one. He then holds up a Domino’s Pizza logo and every kid in the room jumps out of their seat yelling Domino’s. It gets even worse when he holds up and McDonalds’s golden arch logo. This all has me thinking: America is FAT, not just overweight but FAT, orca fat and hardly anything is being done to fix the problem. For the first time kids born today are expected to live a shorter life than their parents. This is simply one of the largest, most important problems facing America today. Do you know anyone who has had a Gastric Bypass? Know anyone who has had a heart attack? How about anyone who is constantly dieting? Clearly we need to change the way we eat, exercise and live. Jamie Oliver is on to something, and in his show (TLC 7pm EST) he explores the idea that if we are going to change our eating habits we have to start with our children. Watch as he struggles to get kids to eat veggies, and works even harder to get their parents to stop feeding them crap.

Click below to watch the trailor from the original series in the UK, and join me in thinking about how we change America. Now I am certainly a business man, and I smell a HUGE opportunity in here somehow. The question is how do you improve peoples’ lives while still making money. Much like Whole Foods or your Local Gym, I believe that you can help people live a healthy life and make money doing it. Got any ideas on how to launch a business? I do and I will share them in an upcomming post.

Jamie’s School Lunch Project on TLC

Is America finally becomming more health aware? I have been thinking alot about food trends in our country and granted I get a very skewed view of our country but I believe we may be on the brink of a revolution. The move to organic produce, locally raised meats and fresh seafood is an important one that we should all be following. Customers are flocking to Whole Foods, PCC, Farmers Markets and anywhere else that they can find fresh produce, meats and cheese. This all got me thinking, is this a cultural shift or a trend confined to the upper class, or those in tune with healthy eating? Are things like home cooked meals, wine and organic produce something that most people care about or a couple of thousand yuppies on each coast? I love Whole Foods even though I know it is more expensive, I love shopping there, and I generally feel that anything I buy will be of the highest quality and freshness. I also love buying from farmers markets, these give the the chance to interact with local farmers directly and also provide the chance to buy fresh local ingredients that are in season.

All of this got me to thinking, outside of Whole Foods how could you start a business to take advantage of this growing trend? A couple of ideas come to mind, cooking lessons, take out lunch spot, farm, wine shop, restaurant, etc. Clearly billions are made each year off of weight loss and dieting however this is a bit different. If people truly are focused on eating less processed foods, and eating more local fresh ingredients how do you create a business that takes advantage of this shift in customer buying habits? Which once again brings us back to my original question, is there really a shift or are there just a bunch of yuppies on each coast who have taken up cooking and wine because it is seen somehow as trendy?

Trying to be a good industry banker in the investment banking community means getting out to meeting with a lot of companies and working with your relationships to get better information about small private companies, financial investors (which invest in the small private companies), and large public companies (which acquire the small private companies).  My most recent trip down to the valley was spent with Juniper Networks and Google.

Needless to say, Google has an amazing campus in Mountain View.  We toured the facilities, which have a beach volleyball court at the center, tons of toys and scooters all over campus, and (best of all) three meals a day in the cafeterias around campus - all at no cost to the employees. 

For the hour and a half I was on the campus, I honestly felt like I’d been transported back to Colby.  As we were walking, skateboards would go rolling by, you’d see people working out in state-of-the-art gyms and swimming in the current pools.  You then walk into the cafeteria and select just about anything you might want to eat.  After the tour, I was wishing that Mountain View was commutable from Seattle, as it is the type of place where you could just see innovation thriving.