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Loading...Burgers and Fries with Your Surgery?
Fast-food lovers, take note. Check into a hospital for surgery, and you do not have to settle for hospital food. Help is as near as the McDonald’s downstairs. Fast food chains are always on the lookout for opportunities, as Care2′s Sam Taxy points out in an article about their lobbying for food stamp allowances. Still, watching hospitals jump on board the gravy train sends the wrong message to consumers.
Dr. Rahul Parikh tried to find out why some of the 27 children’s hospitals with McDonald’s outlets agree to peddle fast food, knowing “they’ll get a black eye for doing it.” Their answer? Silence. Those who bothered to call back refused to comment.
The reasons are clear, as Dr. Parikh points out in his article for Salon. For fast-food companies, a setting where a lot of people pass through on an hourly basis offers good profit opportunities. Hospitals gain financially, earning rent and a percentage of profits. When hospitals are scrambling for funds to cover rising costs, the McDonald’s and Burger Kings of the corporate world are happy to lend a hand.
Some Hospitals Are Part of the Problem
A 2006 survey in Pediatrics found “59 of 200 hospitals with pediatric residencies had fast food restaurants.” The researchers asked 386 outpatients their attitudes toward fast food and McDonald’s food. To no one’s surprise, the presence of a McDonald’s increased both consumption of fast food and visitors’ perception that the food was healthy.
In a study published August 2011 in Childhood Obesity, University of California San Diego researcher Kerri Boutelle reports on a survey of 544 families entering a chain restaurant inside Rady’s Children’s Hospital in San Diego. They were offered a $2 incentive for handing over their receipts and answering a brief survey.
The results “showed that convenience resulted in lunchtime meals that accounted for between 36 and 51 percent of a child’s daily caloric needs. In addition, 35 to 39 percent of calories came from fat and the meals provided more than 50 percent of the recommended total daily sodium intake for most children – and as high as 100 percent of sodium levels recommended for pre-schoolers.”
Read more: child nutrition, childhood obesity, diet & nutrition, eating for health, fast food, health care, health policy, healthy diet, healthy food, healthy food choices, hospitals, nutrition, real food, whole food
First Photo from jeffreyw via Flickr Creative Commons, Second Photo from SweetOnVeg via Flickr Creative Commons
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+ add your ownNot all patients and visitors are on diet.
As long as McDonalds contributes millions of dollars to the Ronald McDonald Houses that help the families of children who have long term hospital stays, McDonalds food will be in and near hospitals. It's all business, I'm afraid. Right or wrong.
Absurd.
Hospitals should try to serve healthy fare, or at the very least not portray fast-food fare as something that's healthy to eat, by being available in a place dedicated to looking after people's well-being.
I live several blocks from a top rated children's hospital, and a nearby Ronald McDonald House, where families from outside the state can stay while their children are receiving care at the hospital. Outside the R.M. House, facing the street, there is a park bench with a life sized Ronald, in full costume, seated upon it. I resent the fact that McDonald's is so blatently advertising to these vulnerable children and families, using its "cartoon image" to promote an unhealthy choice. In addition, all of us in the neighborhood are visually accosted by the image, which is also alongside a walking/biking trail and near a gourmet grocery, as well as a natural foods co-op. What a message---so wrong!
You probably wont see this in my town. Hope people are smarter than to allow it. This is the first time I've heard of this and it just makes no sence at all.
I am a 99% vegetarian but have gradually adopted a pattern of having a burger maybe once or twice a year -- always after a long, exhausting hike in the wilderness or a long day on the slopes. Somehow retreating to my primordial roots awakens a little bit of meat-eater in me.
ANYWAY, whenever I order one of these burgers I always ask for the meat on the side. The counter guy is always a bit nonplussed but they do comply, of course. I immediately grab a thick handful of napkins (with sincere apologies to the poor trees) and place the meat patty between layers of napkins and press down HARD. There's always enuf grease in the meat patty to totally saturate at least 16 napkins (8 on the top, 8 on the botttom). I then take these to the counter staff and demonstrate just WHY I ordered the meat on the side. They're always impressed & apologetic.
I also tear off most of the bun as it's just that awful white bread, and I stipulate NO sauce on the burger, and plenty of salad stuff.
This way, the burger is almost, sorta, kinda healthy. LOL
make no mistake, medicine is now money, not care.
Watch Fathead and see if you still feel the same. I abhor the additives in the food, but cut out the fries and the bun, and you have a decent meal (except for the factory farming!)
I was in the hospital for about 5 days last January -- had some surgery done. I didn't eat the first day, and not much on the second. But by the third day, I was feeling a bit hungry.
What can I say? The food was great. It was like calling room service in a hotel. There was a menu with a wide variety of options, including fruit, vegetarian plates, several kind of cereal, several kinds of pasta, hot meals, cold meals, sandwiches, pot roast, fish and other seafood, roast pork and chicken... just about anything I might have wanted, they had.
Except for fried and breaded foods. Anything sittin' in its own grease was notable by its absence. But the fruit plate was fabulous, and the baked sole with lemon sauce was a real treat.
With all that only a phone call away, who could possibly want a McBarf Burger?
Fast food has no place in or near a hospital!!~~Hospitals are stewards of patient's health and therefore should not allow their patients to have any fast food befor or after surgery!!~~What ever happened to commom sense????!!~Everything seems to just come down to making money!!~~Shame on the fast food joints and the hospitals!!~~
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