Hospital food needs a revolution.

I was surprised to find out that most inpatient meals served in hospitals

are not required to meet any sort of national nutrition standards

for a healthy diet.

And indeed, an analysis on the nutritional value of food served to patients in teaching

hospitals found that many did not meet dietary recommendations.

Warning, read the headlines, hospital food bad for health.

A registered dietitian wrote in to defend the hospital saying, hey, at least over half

the hospitals met at least over half the guidelines, and, hey, they're so stringent

anyway, little eggs in dairy, and you can blow through your limits.

The provocative conclusions of their analysis only lead the media and the public to conclude

that we're a bunch of dunces who

have no understanding of the relation between nutrition and disease prevention.

Well, if the white coat fits, look, we spend a fortune on training doctors you'd think

we could follow through on some of the simplest things like food.

Good diet. Is this necessary to the recovery of health as anything else?

And it's folly to pretend that it's beyond the power of our profession to change this

a line written 75 years ago and still there's pushback.

Or perhaps we should question whether a healthy diet given to a helpless patient

during a two-to-10-day hospital state benefits anyone or anything other than the

dietitian's sense of doing good, responded.

One doctor, always bothered when patients are deprived of a desired morning egg

...