Jamie Oliver’s new documentary will follow 10 families and their unborn children from the womb to when they reach the age of 12.
The ambitious project is part of the healthy living campaigner’s bid to study nutrition and tackle childhood obesity in the UK.
Speaking about the project, which has been compared to Michael Apted’s ‘Seven Up’ which interviewed a range of seven-year-olds and checked back on them every seven years and Sir David Attenborough’s ‘Blue Planet’, Jamie said: "The idea is to get a really legitimate cross-section of Britain today and bring them back every year – kids and family. It’s like ‘Seven Up’ and it requires real commitment from them and real care from us. Basically, I want to do a ‘Blue Planet’ of people instead of ants."
Jamie is passionate about tackling childhood obesity, a campaign which began with his bid to improve school dinners in 2005 and his main aim is cut the number of overweight children in the UK in half by 2030.
He said: "Nothing is allowed to function in my business unless it contributes to that strategy. It can come in different shapes and form, whether it’s storytelling, documentaries, campaigning or just cooking shows – getting people to cook – or it could be a product that’s healthier.
"I’m at a stage in my life where I’m contemplating what is good, and where do I want to go and what is a good use of my time and what do I care about."
Meanwhile, Jamie, 43, revealed he suffered terrible abuse from men when he first started off his TV career as The Naked Chef.
He said: "When ‘The Naked Chef’ was on telly, I look about one year old – I’m almost like a foetus. So for the girls around the country, old and young, when their husbands said ‘what’s for dinner?’, they said, ‘See that boy, he’s 23 years old, if he could cook for his missus, and all his friends, look what he’s cooking, it’s simple, look he’s getting his hand in there’ and they went ‘go on. ‘And then that’s why, if you look back in the papers and study it, men hated me for two years, and I got chased and punched a few times, I had loads of abuse. Men f**king hated me.
"When men stopped thinking of me as the competition, as a threat, when they realised if I cooked for my wife, for my girlfriend, she loves me a little bit more, then in turn – after about two-and-a-half years – men would stop wanting to punch me."
Jamie Oliver’s ‘Blue Planet for people’
