Healthy Food in the Hospital…Right!

If you’re hospitalized and fighting for your life, or visiting the E/R because a family member has had an emergency, one thing you can be sure of is that if and when your appetite comes back, you can rely on the very place where lives are saved on a daily basis to provide good, nourishing food.

And then I woke up.

A tragic piece on NPR this morning has weighed heavily on my mind today.

Not only is the fare offered to patients alarming, to say the least, that which is offered to staff and visitors is equally appalling.

Of course, there will be exceptions to this, and I’d love to hear from readers who can write in and tell me I’m wrong!   However, I’ve seen for myself at a few hospitals around the area where I live what is offered, unless the patient happens to be able to make requests like no gluten, soy, dairy and so on, but even then, it’s really stretching it.

Where is the rationale behind giving someone who is fighting for their life a bunch of nutrient-free, chemical-rich synthetic items to ingest that are so far from being food, you’d be able to keep them in the state they’re in and they’d remain unchanged for a decade?

Oh, I know. I’ll answer my own question.  The rationale is that it’s cheaper to offer this type of not-cuisine.   If people got healthy by eating real food and omitting pretend food, where would the pharmaceutical companies make their profits?

Yes, I said it.

And for the visitors, isn’t it nice to know that when they’re stressed beyond belief at the potential that their loved one may pass away, they can seek comfort in a McDonald’s ‘meal’ right there within the very same hospital?  Not kidding about this by the way; the piece on NPR mentioned that fast food eateries have made their way into many a hospital.  Why not pop in for a quick milkshake en route to visiting your uncle who’s just had his leg amputated due to a long term case of Type II Diabetes?

Harsh blog topic, maybe, but really, this is beyond despicable.

Why is it that legitimate centers for health and healing where actual food is provided have to be the anomaly, not covered by insurance and as a result, out of reach for so many?

It’s just so, so broken…

By the way, if you’re wondering what the ‘food’ in that picture actually consists of, I couldn’t tell you.   Exactly.