Photo: Tara Fitzpatrick
FSD Senior Editor Benita Gingerella moderated a panel focused on fine-tuning the industry’s definition of food as medicine at the recent Menu Directions conference in Atlanta. The panel was made up of experts from various segments and disciplines in on-site foodservice, including Lindsey Palmer, vice president of nutrition and industry relations at Chartwells K12, Chef Jeffrey Quasha, senior director of culinary innovation at Morrison Healthcare, and Carolyn O’Neil, president of O’Neil Nutrition Communications.
What does that mean?
When asked, “What does food as medicine mean to you?” Quasha drew on his own extensive experience in the world of healthcare dining to answer that question, both on the patient and retail side.
“We're always asking ourselves: Is food really medicine if no one eats it?” Quasha says. “At Morrison Healthcare, we take the mindset that every patient matters.”
To reach each patient individually, medical dining professionals need to recognize that positive, life-saving changes in eating habits won't happen overnight. “It takes 90 days to change habits, but we can give them an opportunity to get started,” he said.
Communicating the food-as-medicine message to school-age children “looks different than other settings,” Palmer said. “We want to make it accessible. We do it in the cafeteria, and our main work with our young participants is talking about fruits and vegetables and identifying them. We only have a few minutes, so we try not to give too much information and to give them foods that will help them feel better and feel better.”
Palmer gave the example of the Pixar film “Inside Out,” which deals with emotions: “How do we talk to students about emotions? We use the Mood Boost program, which is where we look at students who don't know what we know as adults. So we understand where they are and make it fun and relatable, rather than a difficult concept.”
Palmer also said there is a movement in the K-12 space to become more inclusive. For example, what used to be called “sports nutrition” is now called “performance nutrition” because not everyone plays sports. Research shows Gen Z is the loneliest generation. We're not mental health providers, but we can talk to them about the foods they're seeing and new experiences and help them understand how that makes them feel.”
O'Neill mentioned Delta's efforts, particularly a health-conscious entree featuring quinoa salad, chicken, roasted carrots and a squeeze of lemon. He also noted that many health-conscious thought leaders have questioned whether this should really be called 'food as medicine.' “Food is food, medicine is medicine,” he said. “But when you're diagnosed with heart disease or cancer or you get sick, you need food as part of your treatment to get better. To me, food as medicine is about having the opportunity to access healthy food. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. Kaiser Permanente has a great website with healthy recipes.”
Where are we now?
“Nutrition isn't a list of things you shouldn't eat,” O'Neill says. “It's about being healthy and happy.” O'Neill's website, The Happy Healthy Kitchen, expresses that connection with beauty: “When I checked into my hotel in Rome, instead of flowers I was greeted with a bowl of oranges, and it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. If we could change that perception and make a bowl of oranges as beautiful as a plate of brownies…”
When it comes to patient meals, “we're still dealing with the perception of what hospital food menus were,” Quasha says. “For years, food menus were a bare-bones prescription to help patients survive. Changing the perception of food as medicine starts with changing the perception of what hospital food really is.”
Quasha, a self-described “data nerd,” found that 75% of patients were on five special diets, such as a renal diet, and the average patient's hospital stay was 2.5 days. He then looked at how patients' diets fit into this equation.
“When I'm lying in a hospital bed, there are three things I look forward to. Aside from obviously getting discharged and having my blood drawn, my biggest thing is thinking about what I'm going to eat,” Quasha says. “In the old days, hospital food would come in to your room on a tray and when you opened it the food looked horrible.”
“They bring in a tray, with china on it, it looks like hotel room service, with breaded cod and citrus risotto,” Quasha said. “Patients will be inspired to go home and explore those foods. They may have never tried celery or quinoa.”
The realities of a low-salt diet mean more creative use of seasonings to make food taste better, and Quasha has found that salt-free seasoning blends that contain more umami flavors are making a difference.
There's also a difference in how healthy meals are presented: “We're changing the perception. If you have a grain bowl with some veggies and three ounces of protein, we're not saying you're eating two cups of food that's under 450 calories. We're saying you're eating a great bowl that's healthy and delicious.”
Palmer said bringing personality to the food is groundbreaking for K-12. “Kids get excited when an adult they haven't seen recently comes to school,” she said. “They want to show off everything new, including putting an orange slice in their mouth. They love showing it off. They're very energetic. We'll bring in one registered dietitian or executive chef. We want the kids to meet new people. Kids get really talkative when they meet new people. We want it to be fun and engaging.”
How is food as medicine evolving?
“I realized the reality is that developments in the field of K-12 education have to revolve around mobile phones,” Palmer said. “We have to figure out how to dispel the misinformation about school lunches and get the right information out to the public.”
Quasha said he sees this evolution as a continuation, building on the work currently being done in each field.
“I think it's a combination of everything we've been talking about on this panel,” he said, “educating the kitchen about what's going on at the ground level in your business. Medically tailored meals are not lean cuisine or frozen meals. If you've had certain surgeries or procedures, you need certain foods, but we also want to encourage habit change, and the only way to encourage that is through deliciousness. People are very savvy and they know what great food looks like. If it doesn't look or taste delicious, it's a failure. If you only have 2.5 days to change habits, the food has to taste delicious.”
O'Neill reiterated the universality of food as it relates to our health: “Food is math, it's science, it's history, it's culture,” she said. “All of these things transform any cafeteria into a classroom.”
Tara Fitzpatrick is the senior editor of FoodService Director. Tara holds a Bachelor of Science from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Kent State University. Previously…
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