Cut the fryer fat to boost heart health
Here’s a brilliant move by some smart Canadian hospitals you want to read about and then consider to follow their example and get rid of that machine in your own kitchen:
Hospitals in Eastern Ontario are working to get the deep fryers out of their cafeterias in a bid to improve healthy options for patients, visitors and staff — a development health advocates welcome.
Removing deep fryers, dropping super-sized drinks and cutting sodium content are three of the measures hospitals are taking as part of the Healthy Foods in Champlain Hospitals initiative. All 20 hospitals in the region have signed on the program voluntarily.
“Hospitals really should be the role models for healthy eating because we deal with the after effects of unhealthy eating,” Sabine Mersmann, vice-president of patient service in seniors and community care at Pembroke Regional Hospital, tells Yahoo Canada News.
Healthy Foods is an initiative of Champlain Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Network, which focuses on reducing cardiovascular disease in the area by cutting risk factors like high sodium consumption, obesity, high blood pressure and low consumption of fruits and vegetables.
The goals of Healthy Foods in Champlain Hospitals are to both remove less-healthy options from hospitals in the region while offering both more healthier options and more nutritional information.
Pembroke Regional Hospital has just achieved the bronze level of the program, which means removing deep fryers and deep-fried options from hospital cafeterias and gift stores, and providing clear nutritional information for their entrees. Changes have already been made in the cafeterias in hospitals in Pembroke, Renfrew, Almonte, Arnprior, Carleton Place, Kemptville and Winchester.
“That went over fairly well and was actually, for the kitchen, a great initiative and they’re very proud of it,” Mersmann says.
Health advocates have long called for measures like the Healthy Foods initiative. A 2008 editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal called for healthier options in hospitals, reading “despite nutrition’s indisputable role as one of our most important determinants of health, grassroots calls for hospital cafeteria reform often face resistance from hospital administrators and even some allied health professionals.”…
