I spent Saturday past sitting for a long while in San Diego Sharp Hospital's emergency waiting area attending to my wife who had the misfortune of falling ill on the weekend. This is not a complaint about the excellent care she received there. Her doctors and nurses were fantastic, took great care of her and patiently indulged my questions about about the triage process and the machines that were going 'bing!' Seriously, we both felt like the entire crew was top notch.
But what passed for available food, either from the vending machines or the cafeteria, was really more than a disappointment (I wasn't planning on eating there), it was a damnable display of just how twisted the problem of health care and diet has become. Imagine the vending machines full of candies, cakes, honey buns and sodas opposite the diabetic ER patients who are visiting to get their next limb amputated. No hyperbole here--a woman being treated in the same unit as my wife had been recently amputated close to the hip and yet lay there in her bed, munching a candy bar and explaining to her doctor that there were other reasons for her high blood sugar.
A rather thin and poorly stocked salad bar in the cafeteria was grossly over-shadowed by racks of donuts, honey buns, bear claws, candies, chips, and general junk food. The dinner entrees looked as unappealing (greasy, bland, reconstituted) as I remember some field meals in the military. The drinks were overwhelmingly soda/HFCS dominated, though there was also bottled water, milk and some juices. Anything that came into the kitchen resembling a fresh vegetable ended up on the serving tray slab, overcooked and institutionally grayed of its former green.
The idea here is that Sharp, especially in the ER, has a captive audience desperate for education about healthy nutritional practices, and it also has an obligation to put those practices into actions that comport with its own positions. For example this Sharp link under Kids Health and Diabetes:
| Breakfast | Lunch | Supper | Bedtime Snack |
|---|
| 1/2 cup cereal 1/2 cup milk 1 slice toast 1 tsp. margarine 1/2 cup orange juice | hamburger 1/2 cup corn 1 apple carrot sticks 1 cup milk | chicken breast & wing 1/2 cup mashed potatoes dinner roll 1/2 cup greens 1/2 cup fruit cocktail water | peanut butter sandwich 1/2 cup milk |
Yet Sharp doesn't give its waiting public quick-snack or sit-down choices akin to their own suggested guidelines for healthy nutrition. Maybe this table is not ideal, but at least it doesn't list honey buns, candies and sodas.
Are doctors there not aghast at that lethal irony? I don't think there is too much disagreement about the connections to high-sugar processed fast food/soda and a long list of problems. Why would Sharp sell this kind of stuff at all? Or at least why not offer a healthier alternative with an exhortation to eat better for better health?
It is possible that I caught Sharp on a bad day. Maybe their fruit bowls were out being refilled or Wolfgang Puck is back in the kitchen as of today. To find out, I sent Sharp an email asking for their position. I will update this post with any reply they give, or if too much time passes on my give-a-damn meter.
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