A hospital is a place to make the sick well. It’s a clean establishment and a friendly environment, paired with a genius medical staff. However, there is one area that goes against the norm. Allow me to introduce to you the hospital cafeteria.
Let me first start off by stating that I began volunteering at the hospital in hopes to learn more about the food service operation in regards to nutrition. There are many different areas of the hospital that gain volunteers, but I wanted to go somewhere different. Somewhere that was frequented by all employees and patient families. Somewhere that was not even on the volunteer department list. (dramatic drum roll please….)This place was the cafeteria.
On my first day on the job, I was a “runner”. I stocked the refrigerator shelves consisting of milk, creamer, juice, water, yogurt, and other breakfast goodies. Then, I moved up in the world and began cleaning the dining room and organizing the condiments. I originally chose the cafeteria because I wanted to deliver food to the patients. Little did I know, patient food deliveries were at 11:30am, and my shift ends at 11am. Regardless, I was given the special job to rewrite the job duties for all the cafeteria employees. This caused a slight cramp in my style because I was the only native English speaker within miles. More importantly, I don’t know 3 words of Spanish! (Well, I’ve learned “papitas”, “Hammone” ((and I most likely spelled that wrong, but the word is supposed to mean ham)), “Dale” means let’s go, “playa means beach”…). SO, instead of asking the employee what their job details are, I decided to shadow them so I could learn by their actions, not their words.
My first victim was the food tray line, which was attended by a lovely woman from Nicaragua. She is the only person who showed my that there were black nylon hairnets, as opposed to the blue obnoxious one I had been sporting.
I jumped right in and said “how can I help you?!”. She said “Serve people.” My immediate thought was how I got fired from my previous serving job…and I don’t think I’m all too well at this serving nonsense. Nonetheless I grabbed a styrofoam to-go container and was face to face with my first customer. Ironically, at this same time, the tray line attendant (we will call her “Marcela”) decided to go take a break and disappear somewhere into the deep dark dungeon we call the cafeteria. My customer pointed and said “tostada”. Tostada?! The only time I have ever heard of tostada was the Tostada salad at Mimi’s Café. It was delicious by the way. I said, “you mean, bread?”. He said “where is the tostada lady?!?!”.
After that small slip up, I began to get the hang of serving the lovely hospital staff and patient families. Their breakfast options that I was serving included but was not limited to bacon, sausage patties, breakfast potatoes, scrambled eggs, corn beef hash, biscuits, croissants, and hard boiled eggs. As nutrition major, I almost passed out when I saw the breakfast options! I felt completely guilty that I was contributing to the obesity crisis by serving this heart attack with a side of diabetes.
I took a deep breath of fresh bacon aroma and took this so called “tostada” and placed it in the bread flattener. It is a 6 inch loaf of white bread, which butter in the middle, that is flattened until it is crispy and then served. The customers love that cuban bread! I thought to myself, “is this made with some sort of special sauce that draws so many people?”. No, there’s not, because I am the one who later got the privilege of lathering the melted butter onto the bread loaves. There’s nothing special about that except free fat, that over time, may land you right back in the hospital. But as a patient this time!
As my shift went on, I found myself trying to cheat the system. Meaning, giving people only one sliver of bacon if they didn’t specify a quantity. Giving people just a small spoonful of scrambled eggs, allowing the grease to drip off the sausage patty before serving it, making small adjustments to conserve calories as well as the hospital budget J
My secret sabotage was aborted when a nurse came up and asked for corn beef hash. This was my first corn beef hash experience. I was unfamiliar with the corn beef scooper (which was an ice cream scooper). I gave her what I would imagine would be enough (which in reality might have only been just a taste…). She said “Excuse me, are you afraid of the scoop??”. Crap! She figured me out! “No…scared of the scoop? Of course not”, I mumbled and I shoveled the light pink beef mush into her container. She was a little peeved that for a whole dollar, she definitely deserved more than what I was scooping her.
After I left the hospital that day, I couldn’t stop thinking about how I was giving people meals with pure fat, although my career goal is to do the opposite. A little girl (don’t know if she was a patient or a friend) had me give her a plate full of bacon, sausage, biscuit, gravy, eggs, tostada…the works! (It was my job, I didn’t mean to!) I literally thought about that all day long. I even had one person tell me to give them extra bacon for good luck.
I decided that this was a wakeup call that corporate dieticians have their work cut out for them! At first I decided that these registered nurses, operating room technicians, and speech pathologists, etc needed some helpful nutrition education so they know what choices to make while at the cafeteria. Then I reminded myself that medical professions require at least some sort of nutrition education while obtaining their degree. Maybe not advanced metabolism classes, but I believe at least “nutrition for non-nutrition majors”. Medical staff or not, I think that people KNOW that oatmeal and yogurt is a better meal than bacon and sausage patties. The problem is that people don’t implement it, for whatever reason.
I eat in that cafeteria every Wednesday, and there are healthy options found between those 4 walls. I have scoped it out! I feel as though the healthier items are harder to find. When I would stock the shelves, I would put the cottage cheese and yogurt right up front so no one can miss it! The chicken salad swimming in mayonnaise went to the back row, along with the puddings and pastries (don’t tell my secret!). Wherever you find yourself, don’t be afraid to look deeper for better options to nourish your body. We tend to mimick our surroundings when everyone else eats a certain way. Be the inspiration others need! You may get criticized, you may get made fun of-but the put downs only occur when others notice your lifestyle change, and begin to evaluate their own wellness.
I encourage you to take the extra five minutes to survey the scene for better food. Many chronic diseases can be avoided or downscaled just by diet alterations (and exercise, but that’s for a whole different blog)! It’s not the first time or the last time that I have been ridiculed for bringing a veggie burger to a barbecue, or fruit to a football tailgate. Don’t hate, appreciate!
