Atrocious Hospital Foods for the Sick & Dying

“There were five items given to my mother. Chicken broth from bouillon, diet sorbet, decaffeinated coffee, diet Jello, and something labeled fruit ice. You would think that a post-surgery patient, in the hospital, would be given healthy food to help heal the body. You can see what they gave my mother to eat was far from healthy. In fact, I would say what they tried to feed my mother would inhibit healing. There was nothing nutritious in any of the items they served her.”

Granted, this type of diet is called a clear liquid diet and is the first thing offered to post-surgical patients to ensure that the intestines that have been paralyzed by anesthesia are “waking up” and able to move the liquids through the intestinal tract. But surely there are better choices than diet Jello that contains, in part: aspartame (yikes!), acesulfame, potassium, salt, red 40 and artificial flavor. Wouldn’t gelatin made with REAL juice and without the toxic artificial sweeteners be better? (And the same can probably be said for the diet sorbet.)

It is tragic to realize that food itself is no longer a sufficient therapy for malnutrition. Fifty years ago when Dr. Geiger prescribed food, it was food that packed considerably more nutrition per gram than it does today. The nutritional profiles of foods have been steadily dropping and even an orange is not what it used to be in terms of vitamin C.

Hospitals need to get creative and come up with better diets for the patients as well as better intravenous solutions and more nutritious ingredients for the feeding tubes.