I don’t want my kids to get fat and die early. Foodie Week #1.

So, you may know that I do have a mild obsession with food…

Eating it. Cooking it. Thinking about where it comes from. Loving it. Hating it.

For the next week I’m going to take a few posts to talk about food. If you’re not a foodie, feel free to tune out or tune in to get a few ideas.

About 3 years ago, I watched something that every so inexorably changed the course of my life. No really. It was a half hour TV show and it did just that; it changed me.

It was Jamie Oliver’s cooking show called “Jamie at Home,” on the Food Network. It was all about getting real food (or growing it yourself) and cooking fresh meals that are relatively easy, sometimes gourmet, always tasty. Admittedly, I was not a cook at the time and I had little understanding about “food” other than what the current diet fad was. We ate Lean Cuisine’s and McDonald’s regularly in the same day as if they offset each other.

Within watching this show about 2-3 times, I was bitten by a cooking bug and a personal food revolution that persists all these years later.

We cook nearly everything we eat from scratch (with the exception of a few quick meals out and some pregnancy emergency foods we’ve got on hand at the moment). We buy vegetables, try to buy our meat straight from the farmer whenever possible. We’ve rid the house of corn syrup and as much of the other crap that gets called food that you can buy at the grocery store. We even dug up a bit of the yard last year and grew some of our own herbs and veggies.

Last week, I watched with anticipation as Jamie Oliver received his 2010 TED Prize and talked about his TED Wish that he wants to mobilize people around. It’s an issue I totally agree with and want to find ways to support.

Take a minute to watch his talk and engage in the conversation around keeping our kids from getting fat and dying from the foods we let them eat.