Children's Hospital Oakland Ranks Worst for Cafeteria Food
With junk food for sale next to an obesity clinic, hospital sends mixed messages
The home page of the website for Children’s Hospital and Research Center Oakland warns about childhood obesity, advising that “a healthy weight starts with healthy eating” and inviting families to adopt a “seven-day healthy lunch plan.”
But during lunchtime on Tuesday, the hospital’s own Friendly Café promoted the “M&M Cookie” for $1.99 as the day’s “featured treat.”
This is hardly the only children’s hospital in California sending such mixed messages, but it is the worst offender, according to a new study from the University of California, Los Angeles, and the RAND Corporation.
The study examined what food was being sold in children’s hospitals’ cafeterias in California and how it was marketed. Researchers deemed only 7 percent of the entrees that were for sale healthy and criticized the vast majority of the hospitals for positioning high-calorie items, like ice cream and cookies, near cash registers to inspire impulse buying.
Children’s Hospital, in Oakland, received the poorest score of 14 hospitals surveyed. Two other Bay Area hospitals — Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford and the University of California, San Francisco, Benioff Children’s Hospital — tied for second most healthy.
Children’s Hospital officials in Oakland defended dishing up onion rings, cheeseburgers and pizza alongside healthier options like Italian pasta salad and okra sauté in the cafe, which serves about 1,200 people a day.
“You have parents and visitors here who it might be the worst day of their lives,” said Erin Goldsmith, a spokeswoman for the hospital. “How can we not offer them comfort food?”
But many hospital staff members eat at the cafe, too. Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital takes a healthier approach, baking instead of frying chicken nuggets and French fries. “We do feel a responsibility to set a good example,” said Tom Robinson, director of the Center for Healthy Weight at Stanford.
Workers at the Friendly Café in Oakland said their offerings had improved over the years.
The cafe used to have a large display of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a popcorn machine, whose tempting odors wafted through it, according to Maggie Lewis, a chef who has worked there for 11 years.
The cafe does have an extensive salad bar, but it is semihidden beyond the cash registers.
Every Tuesday, the North Oakland Farmers’ Market sets up just outside the hospital, making fresh fruits and vegetables more accessible to patients’ families and staff members.
Children enrolled in the Healthy Hearts Program, the weight-management clinic, get vouchers for produce at the market.
But inside the hospital, the sugary and fatty temptations of the vending machines lurk not far from the clinic.
“It kind of makes me laugh,” said Jen Matthews, a pediatrician. “We just spent an hour talking to a family about what not to eat and drink, and here it is right down the hall.”
This article also appears in the Bay Area edition of The New York Times.
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Katharine Mieszkowski
A reader from San Francisco emailed me this comment. He asked me to post it anonymously since he is a Kaiser member:
"Interesting yarn, that. A propos, you've probably seen Kaiser's warm and fuzzy TV ads promoting fresh fruits and veggies, whole-grain breads and other elements of a healthful diet.
On the ground floor of Kaiser's medical facility at 2238 Geary, you'll find a couple of vending machines offering mostly junk fare. And on the ground floor, abutting the facility's foyer, is the Sugar Bowl restaurant and bakery, offering more of same. Yes, the SB does have some more healthful items, but you have to look for them."
Nadja Adolf
Oh, please. Everyone knows that fast food and "bad food" are only banned for poor people. Doctors and administrators aren't poor people.
S.F. Peaches
This is the nature of public relations: say something which sounds nice, but don't act on it.
I am grateful that when I was visiting a terminally ill family member at Alta Bates Summit last year, the hospital cafeteria had a salad bar. I ate lunch there several times a week for three months, and the good nutrition helped me function in a crisis.
The hypocrisy at Children's Hospital Oakland is inexcusable. The "comfort food" which their spokesperson defends may gratify some parents, but it won't help them control their own health so they can remain strong for their children.
In pediatrics, there's a strong emphasis on impressing parents. Instant gratification -- such as the gratitude which some mothers feel when a doctor prescribes unnecessary antibiotics for a child's head cold -- can work against the child's health. I thought of that when I read about the hospital cafeteria serving junk food to visitors.
We should appreciate the fact that the cafeterias at UCSF and Stanford are not going in that direction.
Ethan Braswell
People have to make the choice to eat healthy, the options are there and not hiding behind things like this article says. To me this sounds of selective reporting. If you would have taken the time to actually interview the people that make the decisions on the food for example the Executive Chef..... I think you have a better view and or opinion of what really goes on
Dominique Burks
That's a shame, and considering that is it a hospital, especially the one for children, that's a shame twice as much. With such an attitude we will never reach such a goal as a healthy nation, unfortunately.
Dominique at flv to avi,
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