Hospital food isn’t known for tasting good or even being that good for you. But some U.S. hospitals are working with farms to change that.
You probably think of hospital food as ready-made, prepackaged, bland, and colorless — except for the Jell-O, of course. Maybe you brought a friend or family member soup or a sandwich to their hospital room because the place where you most expect a healthy meal is one of the places you’re least likely to get it.
So you might be surprised to know that some hospitals are partnering with local farms to offer healthier, tastier foods. Some even have their own farm on campus.
“Good food is good medicine,” says Santana Diaz, executive chef of food and nutrition services at UC Davis Medical Center in Davis, CA, and the first U.S.-born person in his family of generations of Mexican farmers.
“Patients are at the center of everything we do,” says Diaz. “I know I am not a doctor or nurse who stands next to the patient, but I want to give everyone in our care the healthiest choices possible.”
Diaz and others prove that it is possible to provide healthy meals to patients And help local growers at the same time.
Diaz and his team serve 1,530 patient meals per day and more than 4,000 meals in retail spaces.
Diaz puts his “boots on the ground of every farm we buy from to make sure it’s a real place,” then uses a local distributor for pickup and delivery.
“We receive two pallets of products every day. That is about 2,000 pounds, or 1 ton,” says Diaz. “When we say we process a ton of product per day, we literally mean a ton of product per day.”
This translates to local tomatoes in salads, local peaches for dessert and black beans becoming a high-fiber side dish for taco Tuesday, and a black bean vinaigrette that keeps the sugar content in the salad dressing low but the flavor profile high.
It is also good for the farmers. With a large-scale operation, Diaz can work with farmers to predict their yields and needs for the coming year or even years to come.
“Farmers and ranchers who don’t have a buyer on the back end are taking all the risk,” Diaz says. “Suppose a farmer plants asparagus. It’s not something that just pops up in a few months. When the asparagus is ready, it is labor intensive: you have to cut it by hand. Then farmers have to compete with other markets. By harvest it may be worth less than it took to produce due to commodity prices. Then they might not plant asparagus again the following year.”
“If we can say to a local grower, ‘This is what we need for asparagus next year,’ we have eliminated the risk for the farmer because they now know they have a buyer and know what they are going to yield per hectare. says Diaz. “And we have kept that crop in the region.”
More than half of the products John Muir Medical Centers serves to patients and visitors (60%) come from California. And 50% of that comes from farms within a 150-mile radius.
That’s possible thanks to their partnership with Bay Cities Produce Co. While Joe LaVilla, the culinary operations manager of food services for John Muir, focuses on the meals, Bay Cities is a vet, working with local farms to ensure that the necessary but less sexy side of food purchasing – federally regulated standards like food safety , fair trade and field, soil and water testing – are up to speed.
“Hospitals don’t want people to get sick,” said Steve del Masso, president of Bay Cities Produce Co. “John Muir has a desire to do right by small farms, and they are committed to keeping locals going. At the same time, there are concerns about food safety. I think we are a good middleman.”
For patients, this means that the stir-fried vegetables or carrots in the carrot-ginger soup come fresh from the farm and not from frozen bags.
“Our overnight oats for breakfast contain local blood oranges. We serve local pumpkins, Brentwood corn in season and up to four specialty salads per day, all based on what is fresh and local,” says DaVilla. “Our bestseller is a steak salad with arugula, endive, bell pepper, frisee and shaved onion.”
Lankenau Medical Center’s 98-acre campus is built on a former golf course and includes a 5-acre farm across the street from the emergency room.
Since 2016, the Deaver Wellness Farm has produced more than 13,000 pounds of onions, vegetables, tomatoes, melons, beans and peas.
“Anything you can grow, we grow,” said Phil Robinson, president of Lankenau Medical Center.
Education is a big part of programming. Schoolchildren visit the farm to learn about food that doesn’t come from a wrapper or bag. Patients with food insecurity – those who don’t have access to fresh fruits and vegetables – talk to a dietitian about products and recipes. They then receive fresh fruit and vegetables delivered to their home.
“If you just patch them up and send them back to where they came from, you’re not doing much good,” Robinson says. “If we really want to make a difference and improve the health status of our patients, it must happen outside the four walls of this hospital.”
All of the 7,000+ pounds of produce harvested each year at The Sky Farm at Eskenazi Health ends up in free food and nutrition classes. This helps patients at all Eskenazi locations – especially those with diabetes, heart disease and other chronic illnesses – learn how to manage and even reverse their conditions.
Lesson topics include “Lifestyle Medicine,” “Growing Strong: Cooking Matters,” “Fresh Vegetarian Fridays,” and “What Can I Eat?”
Pumpkins, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, radishes and herbs are just a few of the crops grown each year on Boston Medical Center’s rooftop farm.
More than 2,000 kg of food from the farm is used in hospital canteens, patient meals, demonstration kitchens and the center’s preventative food pantry, which provides nutritious food to those who cannot afford it.
The microfarm on the third floor of the Health Science Center at Stony Brook Medicine features more than 2,000 square feet of garden space that produces fresh fruits and vegetables used in patient meals.
Their farm-to-bed concept often includes a tent card on the tray to let patients know that part of their meal was harvested on the farm.
Through a partnership with the Rodale Institute, St. Luke’s University Health Network has the St. Luke’s-Rodale Institute Organic Farm, 20 acres of crops that supply all 12 hospitals in their network with 100 varieties of chemical-free, certified organic products.
Everything from salad greens, broccoli and peppers to chard, garlic, beets and herbs are incorporated into patient, visitor and staff meals and available for purchase at farmers markets at various hospital locations.