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Say goodbye to fast food, trans fats
When health care workers take a break from caring for patients with heart disease, diabetes, or other diseases influenced by diet, what food choices do they have? A vending machine with potato chips and chocolate bars? A cafeteria with fried chicken and French fries?
Hospitals around the country are re-creating their cafeterias as they strive to become healthier places to work. Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, CA, opened farmers' markets at hospitals to provide fresh fruits and vegetables for employees and visitors and added healthy selections to vending machines. The Cleveland Clinic eliminated trans fats from the cafeteria and patient meals and removed snacks with trans fats from the vending machines.
"Kaiser Permanente is about health care, not just sick care. We try to focus on prevention," says Preston Maring , MD, associate physician in chief at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland, who set up the hospital-based farmer's markets. "What better place to focus prevention than on your own employees? Without healthy employees here at work every day, my patients don't get taken care of."
Fast-food restaurants are not permitted on Kaiser campuses. Cleveland Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove, a cardiac surgeon, questioned why the medical center had a McDonald's in its lobby. Ultimately, the McDonald's stayed, but changed its menu to offer more healthy choices -- and eliminated all trans fats.
"That doesn't mean you can't buy something unhealthy on campus," says Michael Roizen , MD, chief wellness officer at the Cleveland Clinic and author of several best-selling wellness books, including YOU: The Owner's Manual with co-author Mehmet Oz (Collins, 2008). "We're trying to make [good choices] more...