Healthy Hospitals

Major institutions such as hospitals are becoming known for their negative environmental impact. Food waste, heavy use of chemicals, and massive consumption of resources are just a few of the ways hospitals are leaving their mark. Recently, organizations such as Health Care without Harm have popped up to encourage these facilities to look at more responsible practices.

In terms of food, hospitals have a long-standing reputation as serving less than appealing meals. And what’s more, the food available and sometimes served in health care facilities is often not much better than what’s available at any fast food restaurant or off-site vending machine. It is not uncommon to see vending machines stocked with pop and candy, and cafeterias serving burgers and fries to staff and visitors.

"We have a health system that doesn't care about food and a food system that doesn't care about health"

-- Wendell Berry, American philosopher on food and farming

Fortunately, “green” has been slowly making its way into health care as of late, and with this movement often comes healthier and more nutritious foods. Health care organizations are starting to realize that the food they serve is directly and indirectly related to overall population health and disease prevention. The huge amount of money spent by these facilities in food dollars also means they have a huge opportunity to send a message to distributors by the foods they’re buying.

Trends in Healthy Food in Health Care right now:

• reducing meat on patient menus and adding more vegetarian items
• sourcing sustainably-produced, hormone-free (U.S.) and antibiotic-free meats and dairy
• sourcing locally-produced produce and meats
• increasing amount of organic food purchased
• reducing food waste and composting

Institutions such as Kaiser Permanente (California, Hawaii, Oregon), Allen Memorial Hospital (Iowa), and Duke University Medical Center (North Carolina) have even started on site farmer’s markets, increasing staff, visitor and patient access to fresh, healthy foods.

In the U.S., privately owned hospitals have more freedom to experiment with new ideas, and may be able to incur a bit of a loss in revenue in order to improve the health of their patients, staff and visitors. In the Canadian Health Care system, things are a bit different. For governments to actually implement this into the Canadian Health Care system, strategies need to be used that will ensure the benefit is larger than the loss, in terms of revenue. Another strong argument is that the investment for Canadian Health Care in terms of food dollars will be dramatically outweighed by the dollars saved in chronic disease treatment down the road.

For more information, visit:

Foodmed.org

Health Care without Harm

IFMA Foundation

Institute for Agricultural Trade and Policy

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