Friday Favorites: Hospitals Profit on Junk Food
Why is hospital food so unhealthy?
For more on how the profit motive is degrading America’s health, see:
• The Role of Personal Responsibility in the Obesity Epidemic ( )
• The Role of Corporate Influence in the Obesity Epidemic ( )
• The Role of the Toxic Food Environment in the Obesity Epidemic ( )
• A Political Lesson on the Power of the Food Industry ( )
You might also be interested in my video Just How Bad Is Hospital Food?
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Thanks for watching. I hope you’ll join in the evidence-based nutrition revolution!
-Michael Greger, MD FACLM
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I love this channel!
My experience exactly. Could not agree more.
Patients are widely seen as profit making units for the healthcare system, particularly in the US, but increasingly worldwide in recent decades.
Keeping people healthy makes no profit. It’s obscene this kind of thinking, but it’s commonplace in insurers and administrators.
The system is corrupted. Try and keep out of it as a patient, wherever you can. Stick to whole food plant based, and other healthy lifestyle habits, to max your chances of staying out.
I believe Hospital Food ( In Room Food ) is no different than School Food. More than likely subsidized by the USDA. Pizza, Fries, Burgers, you name it. I worked in a Hospital as a cook, I’ve also worked in a High School Cafeteria, not much difference! 😬
So true. Sad and true. I tried to institute a meatless Monday in a public school in Texas and was reminded that their biggest fund raiser each year was, I kid you not, a Sausage Dinner. Sad, sad, sad.
Processed food is what the hospital wants. Les time to prepare, smaller staff, prepaid everything including peanut butter sandwiches on white bread with extra oils added! RUCK!
I spent ten days at Sunrise Hospital in Vegas with my daughter. The food was atrocious! Some of the entrees had so much salt I couldn’t eat it not to mention all the oil all over the veggies. The salad bar was dismal. They had a grill section, French fries and onion rings and not a single healthy item.
But to their credit, the food they served my daughter was much healthier, low fat and unsalted.
I was recently in a VA hospital, and the problem was not the vending machines or the cafeteria. Those of course were entirely junky fast food. The problem was that the meals they served the in-patients were the worst kinds of meals. Sausage, bacon, and eggs for breakfast, lots of milk and other dairy, sugary drinks for beverages – every meals was lots of saturated fat, sugar, and highly processed carbs. I explained to the staff dietician that I was a vegan, and was told that a doctor’s prescription was needed to get such a special meal. I asked, “why are all your meals so unhealthy?” The answer: the patients demand these types of meals and complain loudly if any attempt is made at healthy choices.
These patients should be treated like toddlers, then. A child will generally eat and try new food if that is the option they are being given. Children/adults generally won’t allow themselves to starve. Eventually, they will eat what is offered.
How can a person go in to the hospital for a heart attack and be given a session with a nutritionist who says don’t eat processed sugar, then that same hospital turns around and offers them juice and soda? It makes no sense!
Thank you Dr. Greger for the continued effort of you and PCRM in spreading awareness about issues like these !
Great speech Dr. Greger
during a recent hospital stay I found that insisting on vegan meals got me individually prepared healthy food. While everyone else was choking down reconstituted powdered mashed potatoes with ””Swiss steak”’ covered in canned gravy, a side of overcooked peas… I had a freshly made bowl of real brown rice, black beans and corn with a side of fresh vegetables. It was obvious that my meal was made with care and attention.
To add to the “sins” tho, candy bars and sodas are offered free to the chemo patients every time you turn around. I always brought my own snacks and water or tea from home.
Good for you!
Your meal was probably cheaper lol
honestly the potato, steak, peas, gravy meal seems healthy to me
Yep. I just posted that chemo centers give patients donuts.
….after unexpected (out the blue) heart attack at 51, my family now “feeds itself”….cooking at home 95% of the time. We no longer participate in the (For profit corp) “HUNGER GAMES”. And we definitely won’t ever eat animal products again! Thank you Dr. Greger for helping contribute to prolonging my life and the health of my loved ones!
I’m sorry for your heart attack and am happy you and your family are on a healthy path! We eat at home now, too. I’ve never chopped and cooked so much in my entire life, but we are all healthier and happier for it so it is totally worth it!!
I saw a friend through open heart surgery after he had a heart attack. The day after the surgery they handed him a menu to choose meals for the next day. Eggs, bacon, sausage were featured on the breakfast menu. Oatmeal was not even an option.
My dad had triple bypass surgery a few years ago and the first meal they served him was beef stroganoff! Criminal!!! What was the point of the bypass? Collect money for a procedure that you’ll just have to repeat next year?!
Wow. Just Wow. Healthy food not even an option.
I can’t understand why hospitals in Canada allow McDonald’s on site and Tim Horton s and vending machines full of all kinds of poison on the children’s Wards. I’m appalled. So what can be done?
I learn so much from your podcasts.
Ottawa
Thank you Dr. Greger, for being brave enough for this message. I’ve shared it far and wide. It is a SIN that such things exist that profit is a bigger concern that health anywhere, but we subsidize garbage in public schools and call it ‘food’ which gets the whole process started down the unhealthy path. Then we even give it to our veterans. Sinful.
In the hospital my father passed away in, there was a Roy Rogers restaurant inside in addition to the hospital cafeteria. And across the street was a Wendy’s. In the acute care hospital my mother was in, there was a McDonald’s, a Subway, and a Wendy’s all within walking distance. Hospitals are competing with restaurants located outside around it. Many people working in the hospitals want to eat fast food or similar food. I’ve even seen staff ordering for pizza delivery. So hospital cafeterias also have that kind of food in order to compete and stop profits from going to restaurants conveniently and strategically located outside the hospital.
Three years ago i had a total knee replacement. I was interviewed by the kitchen representative about food choices but my answer threw them for a loop. They only fed me salads for every meal. Not a bean in sight!!!
I HAD TO CLAP ALL BY MYSELF FOR THIS MESSAGE FROM DR. GREGER! HOW WILL WE EVER CHANGE WHAT IS BEING DONE WRONG ALL ACROSS AMERICA??? HOSPITALS SHOULD BE ONE PLACE WHERE PEOPLE CAN **TRY OUT** HEALTHY FOOD, IN CASE THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS! Please, let’s all take the time to write letters to the hospital administrators in our communities to make healthy food in hospitals a reality; otherwise, 25 years from now JUNK FOOD will STILL be the only food available for patients and visitors alike!
Not to mention if they fed everybody salad most people would be in a hurry to get better and leave. Thanks Doc and staff 🥦❤ * I refer of course to salad as made by people who are not whole plant foodies, which is a completely different definition than a proper salad built by a whole plant food loving vegan volume eater ❤🥦
As a former diabetic who controls it with a WFPB diet, after just 2 days in hospital eating their crap food, they wanted to give me insulin… instead of decent food! Same with my ex. Ludicrous!
My dad had congestive heart failure and diabetes. I kept his legs from swelling up (water retention) by making sure he didn’t eat too much salt in the meals that we made at home. Even when we went out to eat, he didn’t really have problems BECAUSE he ate low sodium the rest of the time.
Whenever he went to the hospital or to a rehabilitation center (after he would be in the hospital, he would have to regain his strength at a rehab center), they would serve him lunch meat, salty soup, high carb meals, etc. His sugar level would sky rocket and we would have to remind them he was diabetic and needed a diabetic menu, and his legs would swell really bad. It got so bad one time, his legs looked triple the size they normally were. It made me so mad. I’m not an expert/nutritionist/doctor, but some how I did a better job than they did with his diet. Crazy and ridiculous.
Thank you for covering this <3