Dear Editor
May 21st, 2015, here I was at Wiarton Hospital with acute asthma. After four days, as I am surfacing and on my way to recovery, eating solids, I am dismayed. This is not new to me, after all, I had been hospitalised back in 2011, same week end in May, same acute asthma, I had even spent the week before in Parry Sound hospital. However, that was when they used to cook the food in Ontario Regional Hospitals.
Is the stuff they serve patients health? Is this food? No cooking anymore, it is all standardized and mechanically prepared. For example, the "beef" stew I ingested, (ingested because I couldn't eat the tiny Tic Tac size meatball like pieces save for one or two) it couldn't even compare to canned stew it was so scary. To say nothing of the "chicken" piccata which consisted of one piece of chicken that could easily have fitted in a teaspoon and, wonders of wonders, it was tough. How can that be? There were minute pieces of peppers that couldn't even cover a fork, that amounted for vegetables. I couldn't ingest the pasta, the sauce was just gross. A very dismal experience. Then to top it all out, everything came prepackaged with added sugar (yogurts, puddings, Jell-O, custards).
How can you get well soon? On the other hand, my dad used to keep an uncomfortable bed so the visitors wouldn't stay too long. I guess feeding bad food is a good idea if you still get patients that can bypass the medical team and try to get in the hospital for a staycation? If this wasn't the intended goal, then (and here comes the crux of the problem), they re-invented this no-cooking in the hospitals to know exactly how much you are spending on tax dollars ahead of time. Imagine that, more efficient, terrible unhealthy food in order to balance a budget?
This aberration called "food", because, I wouldn't feed to someone I despised, makes you wonder, how do you think the hospital staff feels about these administrative decisions? When I was hospitalised in 2011, they still made their food there. Made it cost effective too. It was very palatable for hospital food and much healthier and fresh. After all, the hospital nurses and assorted staff is our real strength here, they give tremendous services, all of them. These decisions made up higher, took the kitchen staff's real work, their pride, their reason for being in healthcare and made them walking "unhealthy food" distributors to the patients. Where is the ethic?
Food is health too. Perhaps the real question you might want to ask is "Who" owns those slop distributing companies? Who in Ontario politics or higher administrative fields, is choosing these million dollar making companies that our taxes dollars are contributing to making richer and reducing our local regional workforces to these awfully unethical working conditions? It bears investigation, I say. The bottom line is a crooked and very unhealthy road to our health care success in Ontario. We can do better, after all, our Canadian healthcare is world renowned.
