Taking the "Health" out of Healthcare

I may not have mentioned it but I have a Culinary degree. I went to school to learn how to cook and I loved every minute of it. They taught us all the traditional techniques of cooking and how everything tastes better with butter and pork fat. You know what? They are absolutely correct. The sweet delicacies of whole butter, heavy on the sweet cream, and ANYTHING cooked in pork fat is just to die for. We experienced, tasted and cooked things most of us had never heard of. We learned how to hold a knife, peel potatoes, small dice things very quickly and learned all those other cool things you see your favorite Celebrity Sell-Out...er...ummm...Chef do on TV. Oh yea...we also leaned Nutritional cooking. Let me see....we spent...ummm...well I guess it was about 6 weeks leaning the basics of healthy cooking. The other 6 weeks were lumped into another form of cooking that may or may not have been related to nutritional cooking. That's my point: I don't remember a damn thing from that class. Possibly because it was clouded by 47 weeks of other stuff that had nothing to do with it. American Regional, World Cuisine, Baking and Pastries, Advanced Pastries 2, Asian Cuisine, Garde Manger...all of those classes took a full 11 weeks to complete. 11 fucking weeks learning how to make Pates and force meats and "insert your meat choice here" en croute but they can't spend more than 6 weeks on teaching us to cook healthy? Did they think we would upset the Culinary Gods that reside in France? Did they think it was like spitting on the grave of every pioneer Chef that came before them? Or did they just simply not care enough about it to put anymore effort than necessary? My bet is the latter.

So that 2 years I spent learning the intricate nature of pork fat and lard eventually landed me a job at a hospital. For the sake of internet prowlers I will leave the name of the facility out but I will say that we are the flagship location in our division and have close to a 700 bed capacity. Our enployees range from all types of lyfestyles and cultres. The kitchen is staffedwith cooks that have many years of combined experience and produce about 1200 meals each day for our patients. The cafeteria serves 500-1000 meals a day to guests and employees. As an employee the cafeteria is my main source of nourishment considering I get a measly 30 minutes for lunch and they discourage going off-site for food. That is what we are going to focus on today...the Cafeteria.

Anytime you go to a hospital, and I hope it's NOT where you spend a rockin' Friday night, one of the biggest questions is "Where is the cafeteria?" For some reason guests are visiting loved ones during a time when they need food. Maybe its the comfort aspect or nervous nature of people with hospitals and needing food. Let me tell ya we got comfort food galore in ours and our employees are showing signs they are damned comfy with what they are eating. Let me take you through a walk through of the cafeteria:

There are two entrances and depending on the time of day depends on what you see. This morning I walked in to do my rounds and I was warmly greeted with the sight of this:

MMMmmmmmmm, donuts, and bagels the size of your head and croissants bigger than a softball filled with enough butter to clog the toilet. Oh yea, those round glazed heavenly bodies are Krispy Kreme we have brought in on a dialy basis. Let's keep walking and maybe we will find something tasty. OK, here is the serving line. Standard Cafeteria style service with everything pre-made and sitting in steam wells. Have a look:

Yea, baby, soak that in. Dive into that sausage gravy FROM A CAN, frozen biscuits, pork sausage, BACON, and just for good measure there is a little bit of turkey bacon and some hard boiled eggs that have been sitting there for AT LEAST 2 hours. Maybe I'll find some fruit instead:

Pretty sad huh? BUT WAIT!! THERE'S MORE!!! Sort of...

How the hell can fruit, of all things, be an after thought in a Healthcare cafeteria?? It's actually an easy answer: The employees won't buy it so they don't putmuch out therefore there is not that much wasted. *slaps head* Of course, the fatties that work here won't get a piece of fruit for breakfast when they can get sausage gravy FROM A CAN!! Nothing tickles the tonge and dances on the senses like a ladel of the mecca of gastronomic creations GRAVY FROM A CAN!!

On second thought I've lost my appetite. Maybe I'll just get something to drink.

Jesus Christ on a cracker??!! Was I majically teleported to a QT or Race Trac?? Oh, wait...LOL, it's the same place. Breathe it in folks because not only do we feed our employees fatty foods and unhealthy fried stuff but we give them the vehicle for everlasting longevity in their departments....CAFFEINE AND SUGAR!! I have counted on numerous occasions no less than the following:

6 different "Coke" labeled sodas (ie. Diet, Lime, Cherry...etc)

8 different energy drink flavors over 3 different companies

5 different Dr Pepper labled products

5 different kinds of bottled tea

3 Sprite products

Big Red AND Big Blue. (WTF is Big Blue?)

And the grandaddy winner of all drinks...Tahitian Treat. This one 16oz bottle packs more sugar and calories than ANY other carbonated soda. 220 calories. Guess what? We can't keep that shit in stock. Keep in mind this is JUST the softdrink coolers. To my immediate right is another cooler stocked full of sugary bottled juice and another cooler full of over priced Odwalla drinks AND ANOTHER cooler of various drinks like Starbucks bottle fraps, Nestle Quik and junk like that.

If you haven't figured it out by now it is VERY difficult to find something healthy or at least semi-healthy to eat. Yes, we do have a salad bar and it is quite good but it takes a HUGE toll on my colon and digestive system to eat salad every single day. I can do it and have done it before but I would rather not.

Look, here's the point of all this: I work in a facility that should be the pinnacle of healthy environment. No fried shit, no trans-fat, no refined carbs and no junk food should be the words we scream to everyone. We should march to the beat of the dieticians and heed their words. We should be afraid of the very things that we treat our patients for. Diabetes, heart disease, obesity, gastric bypass should be the words that make us tremble in fear. We should look at ourselves and then look at our plates and then think real hard if we need that extra chicken tender or that extra hamburger patty. It's a sad state of affairs when the people who are treating your Father, Brother, Mother, Sister, Wife or Husband and they are the ones who need help as much as they do.

Moral of this story: Bring your lunch. At least you know who made it and can make your own choices.

Current weight: 209lbs.