Jamie Oliver is a man with a mission.

In the rarified world of today’s celebrity chefs, some have attained their status because they’ve earned it with in-depth knowledge, innovative or authentic cuisine, and stellar restaurants. The best of the best spawn protégés who, under their tutelage and with their support, go on to establish their own successful careers.

But there are others with little-to-no culinary capability, whose fame is due to perky personalities and media hype. As often as not, what they prepare on air is dreadful – and sometimes downright creepy – to those who know what constitutes good, real food.

Some food critics – at least the snobs among them – put Oliver in the second category when he appeared on the American culinary scene in 1998 with his first TV series.

There were reasons for their skepticism. The show’s moniker, The Naked Chef, was a tease: It wasn’t Oliver who was naked, the show’s publicity coyly said, it was his food: stripped down, simple, approachable, honest cooking. And the cute guy with the cute British working-class accent, stylishly disheveled hair and cheeky attitude seemed to fit right in with others who’d become famous for their style, but who had no underlying substance or knowledge (think Rachel Ray). He hadn’t really even been a chef – the closest he’d come was working in London’s highly regarded River Café, where cameras had discovered his appealing on-screen persona during a shoot there.

I was dubious myself at first, primarily because of the “Naked” shtick. Watching those early shows, though, I was impressed. Oliver might not have ever been at the helm of his own restaurant. But he’d been working in kitchens since early childhood – first in his parents’ country pub, then in a series of restaurants, ending with the vaunted River Café. He might not have been an innovative chef, but he was definitely a gifted educator who knew his stuff, and whose enthusiasm for his subject was infectious. And he was cooking – and teaching – exactly what that publicity promised: good, real food.

Twelve years later, after penning nine cookbooks and appearing in multiple television series, Oliver has proven those early critics wrong. In fact, it’s safe to say that no other celebrity chef anywhere has done more to promote eating healthy, real food and to combat the problems engendered by habitual consumption of the over-processed, additive-laden junk that constitutes the diet of so many Britons and Americans.

Oliver started with “Fifteen,” a teaching