Last Thursday, the Globe and Mail published an article about hospital food, and some new initiatives around getting more Ontario food onto patient plates.  For what I'm sure is a list of reasons, the facts in the article were not clear or accurate, and the piece does not tell a truthful story about what's really happening.  I wrote a comment for the website under the article, but have now tried 5 times unsuccessfully to post it.  So here's the original article, and my comments.  

While understanding that you can't always expect that journalists will tell the story the way you want them to, I am disappointed in the lack of due diligence on the part of the writer. The facts are not clear or accurate, and for those of us working hard to make change to hospital inpatient menus, this is quite discouraging. 

I've been working on a project at The Scarborough Hospital for the past 9 months to revamp the patient menu.  We have chatted seriously with the folks from Real Food for Real Kids, and are keen to work together once our new system is up and running.  But it is important to know that here at the general campus, we will maintain our commitment to producing food from scratch everyday, using as much locally sourced raw ingredient as we're able to.  The possible partnership with RFRK could supplement our from-scratch menu, and provide us pantry items like vinaigrettes or even fruit purees that are a bit more labour intensive for us to produce. 

Also, I have to respond to earlier comments that suggested that good food in a hospital is a luxury, or that industrial food has been created with some thought to ecology/sustainability.  Good food is a basic human right, in or out of the hospital.  Consuming food is one of our most fundamental human activities, and we all deserve to eat as much good food as we can.  Continuing to not recognize the medicinal value of food will make our health care system increasingly irrelevant and ineffective as diet-related illness sweeps over our country and world. 

The current state of affairs with hospital food is the evidence of years of budget cuts and diminished thinking about the value of food.  I can wholeheartedly confirm for you now that money is by far the major driver behind the poor quality of food served.  And the only place where this highly industrialized food makes "sense" is on a spreadsheet.  For the record, there is NOTHING ecological or sustainable about industrial food, and it's actually a big part of the reason we're in the environmental and health mess we're in right now.

Also, if you've got a loved one in the hospital, and you're taking them food everyday because the stuff they're being served is so awful...you're actually paying for that food twice.  Once through your tax dollars for the first round of stuff that gets dismissed the moment it shows up at bedside, and then again with the extra money and time you spend to buy or cook food to take in.  

In this climate of almost suffocating budget cuts from all three levels of government, nobody is excited about my verdict that says we need to reinvest in quality ingredients and labour to produce good food.  But that doesn't mean it's not true. But we all need to be way more outraged that our money is being so wildly wasted, and at the same time, hospital patients are still considered chronically malnourished populations. 

Our health is on the line here, folks.  We can plunk our heads in the sand, or we can open our eyes and hearts to new realities about the importance of good food.

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Yesterday Debbie, our lead cook at the hospital spent the day in the kitchen at Canoe with Chefs John Horne, Amanada Ray and their rockin’ crew.  I had taken our kitchen team to Canoe in September for a tour and to get a sense of what a full-on, cooking-from-scratch kitchen looked like.  They totally lavished us on that visit, and not only did they open their kitchen to us, but they stuffed us full of delicious things like oysters and lobster club sandwiches! 

It was at that visit that John very generously offered to have Debbie come and spend a day in the kitchen with him, and I was thrilled that Debbie was so into the idea.  When I saw her on Monday afternoon, she was positively giddy with excitement, and just a tiny bit nervous.  We got a couple of messages during the day yesterday, and our communications staffer came back with awesome photos of Debbie, her tall paper hat, her fresh pasta, and her beaming smile.

This morning, she still can’t stop smiling.  When I asked her how it all went, she shook her head at me, telling me how it was just the most amazing day.  Debbie made fresh pasta, helped with some veg prep for dinner service, and smelled, touched and tasted everything.  We're being creative with how we'll work the labour out, but a good chunk of new, fresh food production for the inpatient menu will fall on Debbie's shoulders.  And it's precisely because of this that I've invested in inspiring her with as much simple, delicious food as i can.  Debbie has returned from Canoe full of the glory of real, honest food, and has a fire underneath her to make that attitude come alive here in our kitchen at The Scarborough Hospital.  And for this, my heart is soaring.

Part of my task here in this hospital food project is to inspire this kitchen team to get excited about good, fresh food.  I wanted them to have some sense or taste of the kind of food we COULD be serving to patients, and that simply prepared dishes made from good raw ingredients are all that we need on the menu.  Plus, I figured that the only way to make the kind of real change we’re hoping for is if the staff really believes it’s worthwhile.  I called on some of my friends to help with this effort, and that included Gill and Brent from The New Farm in Creemore, and John and Amanda from Canoe. 

They all answered that call, and then some.  When both Brent and John spoke to our group, they told them about how great it was to have this hospital kitchen crew as new members of our city’s food community.  The kind of change we’re trying to make here in Scarborough is huge, and involves an entire attitude and culture shift as well.  I cannot tell you how much it has meant to me for this project to be so beautifully supported by my colleagues in kitchens and on farms around this city. 

Such huge thanks go out to John Horne, Amanda Ray and the rest of the crew at Canoe for giving Debbie a day she’ll never forget, and for showing me how lovely it is when we take care of each other.  Debbie got a copy of the 3 Chefs cookbook as a parting gift from the team at Canoe.  They all signed the inside for her, and the messages that they wrote were so touching and sweet my eyes were welling up with tears as I read them. 

Here’s a photo that describes Debbie’s general mood today.  I’m the kind of girl who has big dreams and ideas for the work I do, and it blows my mind in the best way to watch these dreams come to life.  Major thanks again to John & Amanda, the rest of the team at Canoe, and to Oliver & Bonacini for being such tremendously generous and engaged supporters of me, my work and this awesome hospital food project.  

I drink about two soy lattes a week, and I like the way Starbucks does it.  About two weeks ago, the person in the green apron told me that if i bought a Starbucks card, my upgrades to soy milk would be free.  I thought that was a good deal, and bought a $20 card, though didn't get the deal on the latte I purchased then.

Next time the green apron gave me back my card and said "if you register this card, you'll get free milk upgrades."  Aha.  The card must be registered for the magic milk upgrades to begin.  So I went online and did the business.  Done and done.  

Today I go in with my proudly registered card and see that I'm still paying the 60 cents for soymilk.  When I ask about it, this third green apron says, "you need to make 6 purchases for the free upgrades to kick in."  I started laughing out loud (surely like a bit of a crazy person), and told them the whole story.  The sweet woman behind the register smiled knowingly and told me that the balance on my card was $0.01.  Hilarious.

I haven't met Fito, but I'm excited that he's putting Toronto on the map pop musically.  Read about him here.

#12towatchin2012

I was so glad to speak to Irfan about our hospital food project, and was thrilled at how enthusiastic and supportive he was.  It got me really thinking about harnessing the voice and influence of doctors in my effort to get better food on those plates.  Irfan has his own brilliantly innovative work, focusing on patients' experiences after they leave the hospital and how that impacts their healing.  

He also very sweetly brought his copy of the Good Food For All cookbook (which I wrote at The Stop) full of beautifully stained pages for me to sign.  Can you believe that?!  Amazing.  Here's the piece...

#12towatchin2012

Turns out, Dave Meslin and I have some pals in common.  The photo shoot was the first time I had actually met Dave, but we've been spinning in axes near each other for years now.  And in the half an hour or so that we chatted, I learned so much about activism and engaging with media.  Nevermind the fact that I watched his TED talk many times in my effort to prepare for mine.  Dave believes in change, and he believes that we can make it happen.  We need more people like this around...read more here.

#12towatchin2012

One of my close pals and Jagmeet are kickin' it in their new Queen's Park offices.  Having grown up in Brampton, I understood exactly what a hugh victory Jagmeet's election is.  Those ridings have been Liberal for as long as I can remember, and he went in there, talked to the young people, and painted the town NDP.  This guy makes politics look pretty good...

#12towatchin2012

Aziza and I chatted briefly at the photo shoot, and had this really interesting conversation about the other changes that can be made to hospitals to optimize the patient experience and healing process.  She's an architect, and offered some really lovely thoughts about the importance of well designed space.  Read all about her here.

#12towatchin2012

Ins was being photographed when I got to the photo shoot, and he was unfortunately the one person I did not get to speak with.  But one look to theatre circles in this city and you discover how much anticipated his play Kim's Convenience is.  Read all about Ins here.

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He and his colleague have created the most interesting app, for a much needed population of people.  This is forward thinking in a way that opens the world up to people from whom it was once closed off.  Check him out.

#12towatchin2012