Balance June 2018 - 58

BALANCE PROMOTION

Love your oats

Flahavan's is
partnering with
best-selling author
and personal trainer,
Alice Liveing, to
inspire the nation
with oaty recipes.
"Homemade,
no- cook energy bars
keep me going when
I'm running about all
day. When I get the
chance, I love to whip
up a batch and
portion them out for
the days ahead.
Flahavan's Organic
Oats are my go-to, as
they make the
creamiest porridge.
They'll take
your energy bars
up a notch, too!"

Induce serious oat envy with
these raw energy bars.

ake these grab-and-go snacks,
complete with lashings of peanut
butter and Flahavan's Organic Oats,
to fuel a busy week.

PEAN U T BU T T ER AND
OAT EN ERGY B AR S

You will need
* 100g Flahavan's Irish
Organic Porridge Oats
* 200g Medjool dates
* 200g peanut butter (or
your favourite nut butter)
* 100g ground almonds
* 6 tbsp coconut oil, melted
* 50g dark chocolate, melted
* 20g toasted peanuts,
roughly chopped
1 Grease and line a

20x20cm baking tray
with parchment paper.
2 Pour 60g of Flahavan's
Oats, the dates, peanut
butter, almonds and

4 Flatten down with the
back of a spoon to push the
mixture into the corners of
the tin in an even layer.
5 Place in the freezer. After

coconut oil in a food
processor and blitz until
it comes together.
3 Stir in the remaining
oats, then tip the mixture
into the prepared tin.

an hour, remove the bars
from the tin by lifting the
parchment paper. Sprinkle
with peanuts, drizzle with
melted dark chocolate and
cut into slices.

Feeling inspired? Share your oaty
creations with #LoveYourOats.
For more recipe inspiration
follow @FlahavansUK

Join our reader panel
Thanks for picking up this copy of Balance -
I really hope you're enjoying our 25th issue.
We've had a lot of fun putting it together,
choosing articles we think are informative,
fresh and relevant to Londoners.
We have always received a huge amount
of feedback from our readers and so far
your response has been really positive - I'd
like to say a big thank you to our entire print
and digital audience.
GET INVOLVED
I'd also like to invite you to join the Balance
reader panel. You can help us shape your

magazine by letting us know which features
interest you, which celebrities you find inspiring
and topics you'd like to read more about.
WHAT YOU'LL GET
I'll contact members of the panel from time to
time about how you're enjoying the magazine (or
not), what you think we cover well and where
we can improve. If you'd like to join, visit
balance.media/community and, as a thank you,
five readers will be selected to receive a £50
Amazon voucher. I'd LOVE to hear from you!
Sophie Scott
Editor

N AV I G AT I O N S L U G

GROOMING: JULIA BELL, STYLING: HALIMA O'DONNELL, JAMIE WEARS: ACNE JUMPER AND JACKET, LIBERTYLONDON.COM

words by
S OFIA ZAGZOUL E
photography by
NEIL BED FORD

JAMIE
TIME

He's done a lot, has
Jamie Oliver. But, he
explains, there's still
a lot of important
work left to do

eeping up with Jamie
Oliver is a tricky
business. It's the first
glimpse we get of the
extraordinary mind
behind the face we all know so well. It should
come as no surprise, really, that he's the
master of quick thought when you consider
he's one of the most successful chefs the
world has ever seen.
In the 20 years since he first graced our
screens as The Naked Chef we've seen him
cooking endlessly for an incredible 23 recipe
books, travelling the world filming, opening
restaurants galore and adding husband,
father-of-five and government health
campaigner to his CV.
By his own admission he's an ideas man
and reckons what sets him apart from others
is he's stupid enough to give his theories a
shot. It's a humbling excuse for a man who,
despite all he's achieved, is still only 42.

RETIRE? NOT YET...
Jamie Oliver has already changed the way we
eat as a country, his recipes surely gracing
almost every dinner table. Now tackling
childhood obesity is his number one goal.
For a man who cooked his first omelette
at seven and who had six years of kitchen
training by 14 it's pretty normal, right?
At least it is to him. So, will he ever stop,
especially now he has five children, ranging
in age from 15 to one, and a wife who would
surely like to see him a bit more?
'I have made a decision to go all out for the
next 12 years to get things where they should
be,' he tells Balance. 'And then I will happily
f*cking retire. I could throw the towel in now
and see my kids growing up and that would
be lovely.
'I like to think that I'm not mad and if I fail
while trying, that's not bad. I'd like to think we
are doing the right thing at the right time.'
Jamie's 12-year plan to halve childhood
obesity aims to get junk food ads off TV and
stop energy drinks being sold to children,
and he and his team won't stop at anything
to see real change.
'We would rather be your best mate and do
something together but if you are just a bag
of sh*t we will make a documentary about it
and be a real pain in the a*se,' he says. Sounds
exciting, although also quite terrifying.
'The statistics are really frightening. One
in three step into secondary school as obese.
And 85% of those will be like that for the rest
of their lives. You could easily go "Oh I don't
give a f*ck". But, I do. It's not because I am
kind or clever but when you witness things,

HAIL TO THE CHEF

it changes you. I also think when you've said
you're going to do something on TV, you look
a proper d*ck if you don't.'
Joking aside, mudslinging in the media is
nothing new to Jamie and he confesses he's
become quite hardened.
'I think in Britain, being enthusiastic and
having an opinion and, God forbid you earn a
couple of quid; that puts me on a high level of
being disliked.
'To be honest. I just feel like I am 20 years
in and battle hardy. I am fairly sensitive and
I am quite hard to crack. But once I am
cracked, I am in bits. I still get "Where's my
Turkey Twizzlers?" - someone thinks I took
something away from them. I didn't. We
put standards in and we put more meat in
your sausage, gave you a better one.
'It's perception to say I'm middle class
and telling people what to do. To be honest I
haven't spent 20 years doing that; I've spent
20 years getting passionate about things I
think are wrong. And I have some solutions.
But generally unless I've f*cked up, I don't tell
anyone what to do.'
Sleep is now high on the agenda, but
it wasn't always. Jamie struggled so long

KNOWING YOU
COULD ALWAYS DO
BETTER FEELS LIKE A
GOOD PLACE TO BE
with so little he was forced to call in expert
assistance. Now he's running sessions for
teens facing GCSEs, his eldest daughter,
Poppy, being one of them.
'I went through six years of about three
hours sleep, just working too hard. Then I
went through a revelation and over the last
eight years have started spending time with
sleep scientists,' he reveals.
'I'm getting a pretty solid six (hours a night
now) which is on the cusp of acceptable. I
have reversed life a bit. Basically I consider
work my hobby and sleep my work. I wear
the campest velvet eye patch and I look like a
proper d*ckhead and I don't give a f*ck'.
An extraordinary upbringing above his
parent's pub in Clavering, Essex, and seeing
a working kitchen with eight professional
staff goes some way to explaining just why
Jamie has proved to be so exceptional,
and he now admits that his mum and dad
were his gastro inspiration.

'We moved to the sh*tty little skanky pub
we grew up in that my Dad turned into a
posh pub. He was a chef. I didn't know then
but he was one of the early pioneers of gastro
pubs,' Jamie says.
Battling dyslexia, Jamie faced ridicule
from mates and an education system
woefully inadequate at dealing with him.
'I just stuck to the cooking because it kept
me safe mentally. I went to special needs
all through secondary school, it was not
the greatest. Their way of fixing me was to
put me in front of the whole school, 800
boys, and get me to read out five pages of
Shakespeare. Can you imagine?
'"We'll smash it out, there's nothing wrong
with him," they said. To be honest it didn't
bother me because home was so great and in
a family business there's always a pound an
hour to be earned washing up, peeling veg.
At the weekend I was working and I'd get
praised a lot, so I just stuck to it a lot.'

LIVING FOR NOW
So how does he keep his sanity, with fingers
in so many pies? Does the fear of mortality
drive him forward? 'I never used to be
spiritual but I f*cking am now,' he replies. 'I
think nutrition has made me spiritual. The
more I have learned.
'There's no such thing as perfection and
anyone who tells you they've got it is a
f*cking liar. I think questioning things is
always good. Knowing you could always do
better feels like a good place to be.
'Self-care and self love is a concept
I'm warming to,' he adds. 'I quite like the
Ayurveda stuff, Chinese medicine. The
concept of mindfulness. We know so little, so
that leaves it open.
'It's quite hard to prove health benefits
about herbs and spices because the money
is not spent on it but we know about
antioxidants. I'm all over herbs and spices
like a rash. I love the medicinal flavour. I
know that if you get that, it's good for you.
'Placebos and the capacity to heal yourself,
we know that's beyond powerful, too.
'And that thing about liking yourself. I'd
love to be religious - I am not religious, but I
do find myself talking to myself and I think
it's really important to do that. I don't know
if it's because I'm getting older and when you
get older you feel more vulnerable.
'That whole thing about living in the
moment, well, it just makes sense.' B

WIN

5 x £50 Amazon
vouchers up
for grabs!

Jamie Oliver supports the 2030 Project, which
aims to halve childhood obesity within 12 years.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Balance June 2018