I have been thinking about hospital food quite a bit lately because my mother just underwent heart surgery and the food she has been served has been well to be kind absolutely awful.
I actually think hospitals have such terrible food because they use it as a treatment tool. Think about it. If they serve you pork tenderloin with an apple, bacon, and fennel chutney, with your favorite starch would you ever want to leave? If dessert was Ben & Jerry's ice cream every night people would be jumping in front of cars to get into the hospital.
Instead those clever folks in the dietary department figured out long ago they needed to offer some motivation to the patient to get better and get the hell out because there are plenty more paying customers out there. By offering food that is just complete rubbish the patient yearns for their favorite foods, doctor's orders be damned, and get motivated to get better and get their eat on.
I know if hospital food was placed in front of me I would walk, run, or crawl if need be with tubes trailing behind, to the closest decent restaurant. Hell after a hospital stay you might find me eating in a chain restaurant *gasp*!
I must however give mad crazy props to the clever folks who thought this scheme up because if it works and get my mom better I'm totally OK with that horrible hospital food.
I have an alternate theory...
ReplyDeleteWhat if, like airline food, hospital food is terrible because the audience is mostly captive? Its unlikely that people in a hospital will get much food from the outside during their stay, especially if it's against Dr's orders, thus they become desperate enough to eat anything. :-) Even the green jello.
That being said, I like your thought better and please wish your mom a very speedy recovery for me.