Talking point: Food and cooking

This week's talking point deals with food and cooking. Before getting together with the members of your conversation group, go over the questions below, so that ideas flow more easily when you meet up with your friends and you can work out vocabulary problems beforehand.

• Do you have a healthy diet? Talk about the food that you typically eat.
• How have the eating habits of Spanish people changed over the last few years?
• The Mediterranean diet is said to be beneficial. What are its main characteristics?
• Why are ready-made meals and fast food popular everywhere?
• Why is breakfast so important? What do you usually have for breakfast?
• How can governments help people develop good eating habits?
• How often do you eat out in restaurants? On what occasions? 
• Talk about your favourite restaurant. What makes it different?
• Do you enjoy cooking? Are you good at it? How often do you cook?
• What are your favourite meals to make?
• Describe the last meal you cooked for/had with a group of people.
• Who makes better cooks men or women? Why?

To illustrate the topic, you can watch (and discuss with the members of your conversation group) this trailer of ABC's TV programme Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, aired in 2011.

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to beautiful Huntington, West Virginia, population 50,000. Home of Marshall University. And recently named… The unhealthiest city in America. In a place where nearly half of the adults are considered obese, and incidence of heart disease and diabetes lead the nation, one man is coming to lead a food revolution.
JAMIE:  This is about life and death.
ANNOUNCER: Jamie Oliver, renowned British chef who transformed the British school food programme…
JAMIE: Everyone can do better.
ANNOUNCER: …has come to our shores to take on the biggest mission of his life — to save an entire American city.
JAMIE: I’m here to inspire and show America that just a little effort can make a massive difference.
ANNOUNCER: But in this town, the revolution will meet resistance.
RADIO ANNOUNCER: What are you here for?
JAMIE: The results came out that this town was the most unhealthy town in America. This is a government statistic, based on death.
RADIO ANNOUNCE: We don’t want to sit around and eat lettuce all day. I don’t think Jamie’s got anything that can change this town. He can try all he wants. I don’t think he’s got it.
JAMIE: I thought there was only miserable bastards like that in England. How’s your pizza for breakfast?
KIDS: Good.
JAMIE: In all of my years, I’ve never seen pizza given for breakfast in any country. Who knows what this is?
BOY: Potatoes.
JAMIE: So you think these are potatoes? This is the future of America.
SCHOOL COOK: What’s wrong with that?
JAMIE: What’s wrong with that? What’s right with that? Would you eat that?
COOK: Yes. I think it’s good.
JAMIE: I’m talking about causing a big fuss and changing things. Change.
COOK: Yeah, OK.
JAMIE: They don’t understand me because they don’t know why I’m here.
ANNOUNCER: In the city with a grown epidemic...
GIRL: I’ve tried every diet, I tried going to the gym, I just can’t get the motivation.
JAMIE: This is going to kill your children.
DOCTOR: With the colouration on the neck, with the family history of diabetes, they may be dying in their thirties.
ANNOUNCER: ...one man will try to save 50.000 lives.
JAMIE: If you think that’s not important, then shame on you. This is the fat consumed by the entire school for one year. This is the first generation of kids expected to live a shorter life than their parents. Will you support me?
CROWD: Yeah!
JAMIE: I’m talking a seed of change. I’m talking about schools. I’m talking about fast food industry. I’m here to start a revolution. The biggest food revolution that this country’s ever seen.
It’s Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.
JAMIE: Eat your vegetables!