Nasty Things Come in Lunch Bags - 'Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution'

Parting is such sweet sorrow -- as in, refined, artificially colored, high-fructose sorrow. Now that Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution has reached the end of its special six-episode run on ABC, it's time to reflect upon what we've learned. So in the spirit of the show, here's a few CliffsNotes from Jamie's eating-revolution lesson plan.

Lesson 1: You can keep the kids away from the strawberry-flavored milk, but you can't keep the strawberry-flavored milk away from the kids.

In this last installment, Jamie's been away from the high-obesity burgh of Huntington, W.Va. for about three months, long enough for him to promote his cause on a zillion talk shows, and long enough for those pesky prefab junk-food suppliers to weasel their products back into cafeterias.

Read more of our take on the season finale of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution after the jump...
The stockpiles got so large, in fact, that one of the show's primary characters, humorless school-lunch bureaucrat Brenda, announced a new initiative: "Processed Food Fridays"!

Of course, we're all for having a designated cheat day during our diets, but Jamie likened the weekly binge to letting a drug addict hit the pipe every once in a while. "'Have a nice bit of crack on Friday, it's alright!' It's not alright," he said, indulging in a his characteristically hilarious hyperbole.

Lesson 2: Improving school lunch is only half the battle.

Responding to their kids' aversion to the "squash and stuff" ladled on their trays every day, more and more parents were brown-bagging it for them. Sounds okay, right? Back in the day, sack lunches at least meant innocuous bologna sandwiches and an apple.

But as Jamie walked around the lunchroom like some sort of DEA agent on a cartel raid, dumping lunch bags and examining the contents, he was incredulous: One girl had nothing but jelly beans and two flavors of potato chips; a boy was happily munching away on a fast-food breakfast sandwich (how old was that thing?!); and most were fashioning processed cheese-food cracker sandwiches from their little plastic coffins of Lunchables.

Of course, the names of these products had to be blurred and bleeped out, due to ABC's coveted advertising relationships, which begged the question: How much of a revolution can you start when the companies footing the bill for it are to blame?

Lesson 3: Rascal Flatts does not a revolution make.

When Jamie left Huntington for his three-month sabbatical, there was fanfare, a free concert, a giant check from the local hospital president Doug and a promise that "Jamie's Kitchen" would soldier on, teaching locals how to make nutritious meals. But judging by the turnout, it was a bunch of country music fans eager to see their idols for free.

Fast-forward to April, and what had changed? Well, the elementary school principal dropped about 25 pounds, and his former nemesis, school cook Alice, had converted to Jamie's cause in his absence.

But barring that, it looked as if the schools were about to backslide into their old ways. This meant yet another public event -- Jamie's healthy-living "Boot Camp" -- that had a lot of eager parents but, dare we say, far fewer than a Rascal Flatts concert. With that, the show ended on a cautiously optimistic, bittersweet note.

Is America coming around to Jamie's pushy -- if unarguably level-headed -- advice? From the celebrity shout-outs at the end -- including Gwyneth Paltrow, Heidi Klum and Cookie Monster, only the last of whom, we'd wager, has an eating problem -- it would seem so. But judging by Jamie's strong viewership, maybe the nation's households are voting with their ratings points -- and the brash Brit's assault on all-American bad habits will live to see another season, and another town near you.