Depardieu, who has his own Paris restaurant and loves to grow his own food and make his own wine, also said chefs who had been given awards "bore me terribly".
In an interview with Decanter magazine, the star of films including Green Card and Cyrano de Bergerac unfavourably compared the likes of Oliver with the traditional artisans who produce foods.
The people "who bake the bread and make the cheese, who cultivate the fruit and tend the vines" have "an inordinate pride in their profession", said the 59-year-old gastronome.
But he went on: "TV chefs, like Jamie Oliver, are all about marketing. It's very good but nobody can teach the taste of life.
"It's not money that gives you taste – it's in your head. When you have money, you can buy anything you want. But it's not what you buy that's important, its your palate."
Oliver has made an estimated £40 million from cookery books such as The Naked Chef and Jamie's Ministry of Food and sponsorship deals with Sainsbury's.
His boyish 'mockney' style has won many admirers but set others' teeth on edge.
While most applauded his campaign to improve school dinners, which succeeded in winning an extra £280 million from Government, Michelin-starred chef Marco Pierre White dismissed it as a "cynical" publicity stunt.
When Oliver, 33, retaliated that the Hell's Kitchen star was a "psychological bully", White hit back by cruelly dubbing him a "fat chef with a drum kit".
These spats do not impress Depardieu, who believes the food revolution that such chefs have helped bring to Britain have been in vain.
Speaking at his restaurant La Fontaine Gaillon, the actor said: "I loved English cuisine when I visited 30 years ago because it was a poor person's cuisine."
When he was young his family was so poor they could not afford cuts of meat and had to make do with veal or cow lungs.
"You heat it up with a little flour and wine and some onions and lard. It's called le mou, it's what you give to cats. I loved it," he said.
A spokesman for Oliver declined to comment.
*The full interview is in Decanter's January edition, which went on sale on Wednesday 3 December.