Pirate's Cove

As someone who’s spent some time in hospitals for a broken ankle and then a broken leg, I’ve experienced hospital food. No one would give me good Eastern NC barbecue, even though one of the great joints, B’s, was right near the Greenville hospital. The food is not great, right? Here’s how to make it worse for a scam

Hospitals put climate change on the menu

Each year, hospitals across the United States dish up billions of meals. Those responsible for feeding thousands of visitors, patients, and employees every day contemplate numerous issues, from nutrition requirements to skyrocketing expenses.

But increasingly, they also focus on another significant concern: the environmental impact of what they serve and how.

That makes sense given the role that food plays in helping or harming the planet. For example, 34% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide are food-related, according to a 2021 Nature Food article. What’s more, health care has a significant environmental footprint: If the global health care sector were a country, it would be the fifth-largest contributor to GHGs. And a large chunk of hospitals’ environmental impact comes from their food services.

This reality worries health care leaders who want to avoid contributing to environmental problems that can cause or worsen health conditions for the patients and communities they want to protect.

Are these same leaders reducing their own “environmental impact”, or, are they like most climate leaders who have massive, outsized carbon footprints? And why can’t they mind their own f’ing business? Worry about themselves, stop mucking around with other people’s lives.

Hospital leaders are approaching the issue from numerous angles, including how their food is produced, transported, prepared, packaged, and discarded. Often, they focus on three key areas: swapping plant-based food for meat, buying locally and responsibly, and discarding waste in more environmentally responsible ways.

“We look at how we can reduce the environmental impact from food at every decision point,” says Diane Imrie, RD, MBA, who oversees the production of 2 million meals annually as director of nutrition at the University of Vermont Medical Center (UVMMC) in Burlington. “This adds up to a big enough effect on the environment that if we were ignoring it, we would feel we were not living up to our commitments to our patients and to the planet.”

I’m totally not against locally sourced: I buy as much locally sourced food as possible, mostly veggies and fruits. Taking away meat? Stop right there. Don’t make the hospital experience worse. Let the patients have some joy. Or, considering hospital food, sorta-joy. Of course, what all will this cost? Because we keep seeing that all this climate stuff is expensive, and hospitals are already expensive.

But making such changes palatable to patients and cafeteria customers isn’t always easy.

“Food is near and dear to people’s hearts. If you start messing around with their options, it can be tough,” says Kyle Tafuri, vice president for sustainability at Hackensack Meridian Health, which has reduced meat-related GHGs at its 18 New Jersey hospitals by 39% in recent years.

Hackensack culinary staff worked to develop some mouth-watering options. For example, beet greens don’t simply get chopped and boiled; they instead appear in a salad with candied walnuts and a citrus dressing. Other hospitals try small steps, like swapping a 100% beef burger for a version that’s 70% beef and 30% mushroom.

Stop forcing your cult on everyone else.

Meanwhile, from Watts Up With That?:

Politco: Hospitals Turning into ‘Climate Change Fighting Machines’ – Limiting water with ‘timers for operating room sinks’ – ‘More Earth-friendly drugs’ – Reducing ‘anesthetic gas’ – ‘Decarbonize U.S. health care’