HE is one of Britain's best-loved celebrity chefs but Jamie Oliver was reduced to tears after his attempt to cook up a war against fat in the States was angrily rebuffed by locals, a new US TV series airing this week shows.

In Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, the self-styled health guru kicked off the series by travelling to Huntington, West Virginia recently named as the unhealthiest city in America with the highest rate of diabetes.

Hot on the success of his UK reality series, which saw Oliver transform the British school food program, he confidently pledged to "inspire and show America that just a little effort makes a massive difference."

However, the city's adult population, nearly half of whom are considered obese, were far from keen to be preached to on the topic of healthy eating.

In one clip of the show, which ran a preview on Sunday, a talk show host at a local radio station is seen berating a stunned Oliver, commenting: "We don't want to sit around eating lettuce all day. Who made you king?"

"I thought miserable bastards like that only existed in England," Oliver moaned to the cameras afterwards.

His attempts to motivate were yet again thwarted when he visited an elementary school which served pizza to their students for breakfast.

"In all my years, I've never seen pizza served for breakfast," Oliver said, as the canteen chefs insisted they thought it was a nutritious meal.

Eventually, Oliver, famed for his can-do attitude and celebrity clients including Brad Pitt, is seen sobbing, "they don't understand me, they don't know why I'm here".

The preview met with mixed reviews in US media, but a commentary in the New York Post commended "blue-collar English bloke" Oliver's persistence in the face of "mean and downright scary" city residents.