Following his slow-burning success in the small town of Huntington (or, as he says it, ‘Hunningon’) Jamie Oliver is pulling out all the stops, and taking his Food Revolution to LA, the health and image-conscious city that ironically invented fast food, and where one elementary school mentioned has an 80% obesity rate.

Before Jamie even gets to LA, the LAUSD (the schools people) have banned him from every school in the whole LA district. Jamie is upset about it, but no tears yet. We predict that we won’t see tears until next week’s episode, and they’ll probably be aimed at a fat kid clutching a piece of fried breezeblock or something. Anyway, Jamie’s not just going to lie down and take this insult; he’s gathering bunches of parents and inviting them to his community kitchen. The parents have brought along some food from the schools and, even if you’ve seen all the other Jamie-shouts-at-schools programmes, it’s quite shocking. Literally everything is in plastic trays or sleeves, it’s all beige and none of it looks edible. Jamie says it’s like airplane food, but we think it looks even worse than that. Two kids have brought apples, and Jamie gets excited, but it transpires that they’re home-school kids. Losers! Still, they’ll be the only ones out of their whole generation not to die of diabetes at 14 so they’ll have the last laugh. Getting misty eyed (but no tears yet...) Jamie steals a baby and makes a speech about how children are our future (though he neglects to stipulate whether we should teach them well and let them lead the way).

Ooh, who’s this? It’s Scarlett the cow, and she’s marked up to show the butchers’ cuts. It’s a decent gimmick, and for a bovine, Scarlett is very pretty. Jamie’s butcher friend comes along, holding massive bits of dead cow, and we start to worry that Scarlett might cry, but she seems perfectly happy to chew on some hay. Then Jamie chucks some bits of cow in a washing machine, and we swear we see Scarlett flinch. Poor Scarlett. Still, Jamie can be forgiven for this cow-torture because he waves a piece of cow gristle in a vegan’s face. HAH! Up yours, vegans! Anyway, as much fun as putting beef in washing machines can be, this has a point; he’s trying to show how the meat industry uses heavy processing to sneak dog-food-grade meat (or ‘pink slime’) into human food, and it’s actually pretty horrifying.

Following another roadblock from the LAUSD, Jamie gets cracking on his other venture, changing the fast food industry. He starts with small, independent Patra’s, run by good-natured Deno. Deno refuses to make too many changes to the menu, because it will lose him business, and we’re kind of on his side. It’s all well and good for Jamie to say “this burger’s nicer” but when it’s going to cost a business owner customers and money, it’s just not viable.

Jamie’s despondency grows even further as only 15 people (out of ‘thousands’ invited) attend his ‘epic’ presentation about flavoured milk in schools, to show that in LA alone it’s pumping the kids with 57 tonnes of sugar a week. To illustrate this, Jamie pumps a schoolbus, with little child-puppets sitting inside, full of sugar. It’s a striking visual, but it’s bit of a waste of sugar, and who’s going to clean it up, eh? Oh, Jamie is, with his sad broom. Poor Jamie.

At the end, we’ve not had any tears (told ya) but Jamie is very down in the dumps. It’s OK Jamie, the montage at the very beginning of the show had bits with you in schools, so we know it’ll all be just fine! Well, not fine because everyone’s going to die of fatness. This show, just like it’s British predecessor, works because as annoying as Jamie can be, his heart’s in the right place. And he’s right.

Jamie’s Food Revolution Hits Hollywood is on Tuesdays, Channel 4 at 10pm.