February 9, 2016
By Shilpa Ravella
When I was a medical student doing my clinical rotations around 10 years ago, I regularly ate frozen, re-fried chicken sandwiches from the hospital cafeteria, often while watching anatomy videos depicting body parts that resembled my food. And the closer I came to being a full-fledged doctor, the worse my diet seemed to become: The daily conferences I attended as part of my residency included catered meals that were loaded with sugar, salt, and cholesterol. My fellow residents and I had no problem prescribing drugs for cardiac patients as they dug into a hospital breakfast of bacon, eggs, and hash browns, because it was the same food available to us during our 30-hour shifts. Soon after I began my gastroenterology fellowship in 2010, a crash course in nutrition, I vowed never to leave the house without packing my meals for the day.
The science linking a poor diet to illnesses like heart disease and cancer is robust. This past October, the World Health Organization released a report placing processed meat in the highest-risk category for carcinogens, and declaring red meat “probably carcinogenic.” Meanwhile, the latest dietary guidelines from the U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion emphasized the health value of plant foods.
This fact—a plant-based diet is healthier than a meat-heavy one—isn’t exactly new knowledge. But even as medical researchers discover more about the foods that keep our bodies well, many hospitals continue to serve foods that promote disease.