Why is hospital food so unhealthy?

“Put in stark terms, CVD [cardiovascular disease] claims 1 American life every 39 seconds and is responsible for more deaths annually than cancer, chronic lower respiratory disease, and accidents combined.” For most heart attack deaths, you just keel over. Sudden cardiac death “is the first manifestation of CHD [coronary heart disease] for the majority of individuals, particularly among women.” So, “for many of these sudden death victims, their demise was the first indication of the presence of coronary heart disease.” They didn’t even know they had heart disease. That’s why an ounce of prevention is worth way more than a pound of cure—because there is no cure for death.

That’s also why the prevention of sudden cardiac death “remains a major public health challenge” because most people don’t even know they’re at risk. However, we’ve known for more than half a century, when we first started autopsying young servicemen who died during the Korean War, that coronary artery disease begins in our youth, even among young children. So, “business as usual…simply is not going to yield the improvements necessary to radically improve the CV [cardiovascular] health of the United States” and around the world.

There is good news, though. A “low-risk lifestyle (not smoking, exercising regularly, having a prudent diet, and maintaining a healthy weight)” may be able to eliminate the vast majority of the risk for sudden cardiac death. “The time is now long overdue to start aggressive preventive cardiovascular disease programs in our schools, our homes, and our worksites.” How about starting in our hospitals?

As I discuss in my video Hospitals Profit on Junk Food, a significant percentage of hospitals surveyed had fast-food restaurants inside them, with Krispy Kreme topping the list. Brilliant marketing, given that “families surveyed at the hospital with McDonald’s were…twice as likely to think McDonald’s was healthy, as compared to families at the hospitals without McDonald’s.” After all, McDonald’s was in the hospital.

What about food served in hospital cafeterias? Any better? Researchers analyzed 384 entrees from 14 children’s hospitals in California, and only 7 percent “were classified as healthy.” And, just in case someone chose the rare healthy option, 81 percent of eating venues in children’s hospitals had junky “high-calorie impulse items, such as ice cream freezers, cookies, and candy, at or near the checkout register” and 38 percent “had signs encouraging unhealthy eating.” Why would they do that?

If you ask hospital cafeteria managers, “less than a quarter (4 of 17) of respondents reported that the hospital followed nutrition standards for food offered in the cafeteria.” “Nutrition is not a top priority.” It’s the same reason unhealthy food is sold anywhere else: “pressure on food service departments for cafeterias to generate profit.”

“Increased emphasis…[is] placed on running a hospital foodservice department as a profit center”—a bigger and “bigger profit center,” that is. It’s such a metaphor for our sickness-care system in general, where healthy, treat-the-cause approaches are eclipsed by the pills and procedures that bring in the most money.

What do you expect from the private sector? Public hospitals don’t seem to be much better. A 2019 analysis of veterans’ hospitals found that “all VA Hospitals contain vending machines providing a majority of soda, candy, and junk foods that directly conflict with healthy food choice recommendations from US governing health bodies,” such that, ironically, “hospital visits could theoretically promote worse health….An important question that should be posed is why are any soda or candy machines available at our VA hospitals? Are we trading the health of our veterans for profits?”

Maybe it’s time to ban junk food on hospital premises. “On daily rounds, it is appalling to see patients…gorging on crisps [potato chips], confectionery [candy], sports drinks, and cola—the very food items that may have contributed to their admission in the first place…It is obscene that many hospitals continue to have…fast food franchises on site, as well as corridors littered with vending machines selling junk food. Such practice legitimizes the acceptability and consumption of such foods in the daily diet…The obesity epidemic represents a public health crisis, but it is a public health scandal that by legitimizing junk food hospitals have themselves become a risk factor for diet-related disease by perpetuating the revolving door of healthcare…It’s time to stop selling sickness on the hospital grounds.”

What message do residents receive when they are fed pizza and soda at grand rounds? We need a healthcare system with “more Hippocrates, less hypocrisy.”

For more on how the profit motive is degrading our health, see related posts below.