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At long last, hospital food is getting an upgrade. Hospitals have long been on a notorious list (along with airplanes and college dorms) of places with horrible food. What distinguishes hospitals from airplanes, though, is that hospitals are places where the sick are supposed to get well. Serving them chicken that "looked like plastic painted with shoe polish" is probably not the way to accomplish that.
The quote above comes from a blog post that describes the national effort to improve hospital food, led by Health Care Without Harm:
Today, however, nutrition experts, doctors, hospital administrators, food service companies and patient advocates are working together to make hospital food healthier, better-tasting and a key part of the healing process. Ronald M. Davis, M.D., president of the American Medical Association, in an article for the AMA's April newsletter, called on hospitals to "buy meat and poultry raised without nontherapeutic antibiotics, use milk produced without recombinant bovine growth hormones, and replace unhealthy snacks found in many vending machines with healthy choices."
Gerard Mullin, M.D., director of Integrative GI Nutrition Services at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, points out that "food has biochemical benefits beyond just calories. Having the freshest food available to preserve the bioactivity of those nutrients is very important for healing sick patients."
Hospital food's need for reconstructive surgery has led 127 facilities to sign a pledge to serve primarily organic and chemical-free food, produced locally. Kaiser Permanente, the nation's largest health care system, has adopted similar healthy-food guidelines, declaring that its hospitals will work with local suppliers and other vendors to serve food that is "fresher, tastes better, and is associated with increased consumption of fruits and vegetables."
This effort has spread to hospitals in 21 states, ranging from very small (25 beds) to very large (900 beds). Recently the American Nurses Association also joined in the call for healthier hospital food. Yay!
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