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By Matthew Rees

Food and Health Fact #171:

Why are hospitals pushing processed food?

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In the decades-long effort to curtail smoking in the United States, one of the bigger symbolic victories came in 1991: accredited hospitals would need to become tobacco-free zones. Today, it’s inconceivable that anyone would want to bring back smoking at hospitals. Yet many hospitals aren’t doing much to meet a bigger health threat than tobacco – unhealthy diets. In fact, some are even exacerbating the threat.

Past studies have found hospitals serve food that can leave about one in three patients nutritionally worse off. A recent study found that all hospitals in the Veterans Health Administration, which is America’s largest publicly-funded health care system, are home to vending machines that sell a variety of snacks, soda, and junk foods that “directly conflict with healthy food choice recommendations from US governing health bodies.”

But the problem is not just at VA hospitals. Aramark is a leading provider of food to hospitals – and much of what’s available is atrocious. At a University of Michigan hospital, you’ll find bacon, turkey sausage, pork sausage, and “creamy sausage gravy” available – and that’s just for breakfast (lunch includes hot dogs and pepperoni pizza).

Hospital managers seem to be asleep at the wheel when it comes to food. Consider the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. It is #1 for cancer care in the U.S. News and World Report rankings (and has ranked first or second every year since 1990). The institution is home to a tobacco research center and it’s so vigilant about tobacco that job applicants can’t even get hired if they are smokers. As stated on the hospital’s website, “Those who test positive for cotinine [a metabolite of nicotine used as a biomarker for nicotine exposure] and admit that they use tobacco . . . are not eligible for immediate employment.”

This posture stands in striking contrast to the hospital’s cavalier approach to unhealthy food. Consider the room service menu for patients. In addition to offering sugar-sweetened beverages (Coke!), sugary cereals (Cinnamon Toast Crunch!), and ice cream with toppings (M&M’s!), the menu also includes carcinogenic products such as bacon, ham, pork sausage, and pepperoni.

How do we know they’re carcinogenic? The M.D. Anderson website says so, in a section on managing cancer risks through diet: “Eat little, if any, processed meat like deli meats, hot dogs and bacon because they have been linked to colorectal cancer.” An M.D. Anderson clinical dietitian helpfully points to the effect of consuming processed meat: “You’re essentially introducing carcinogens right into the tissue of the lower intestine.”

M.D. Anderson flunks another dietary health test. It is one of nearly 30 hospitals in the United States that is also home to fast-food restaurants, which peddle the very products that contribute to conditions, like heart disease and diabetes, that handicap millions of Americans. This includes the Naval Medical Center in San Diego (McDonald’s) and Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center (Wendy’s).

In the case of M.D. Anderson, it is home to a Chick-fil-A – a chain that was featured in a recent article under the headline, “Why You Should Never Eat at Chick-Fil-A Again.”

The writer pointed out that Chick-fil-A’s standard chicken sandwich has about double the sodium found in chicken sandwiches at McDonald’s and Wendy’s. Other menu items are even worse. A cobb salad with chicken comes in at 850 calories and more than 2,200 milligrams of sodium, which is just under the recommended consumption level for an entire day. The salad can be topped off with a 650 calorie “Autumn Spice Milkshake,” which is larded with 95 grams of sugar.

The United States dramatically reduced its smoking rate – and deaths from smoking – following a multi-pronged offensive against tobacco. Today, there is no equivalent effort to counter the health threat posed by unhealthy foods and beverages.

Hospitals could be part of the solution. The fact that they’re part of the problem speaks to how far America needs to go to win the battle for healthy bodies.