Outsourced hospital food fails the health test

Researchers report that the meals served at three Ontario hospitals are too high in salt.

They analyzed 84 standard menus for regular, diabetic and sodium-restricted diets at three hospitals in Ontario between 2010 and 2011. "We demonstrated that hospital patient menus contain excessive levels of sodium," the study's authors concluded.

Among the regular menus, 86 per cent exceeded the tolerable upper level of 2,300 milligrams per day, about a teaspoon of salt.

"I think the major solutions are just the government setting standards, hospitals implementing those standards and then the food industry certainly lowering sodium levels in the foods that they produce," University of Toronto researcher and dietician Jo-An Arcand told the CBC.

The CBC adds that earlier studies of sodium levels in long-term care facilities found those meals may contain up to 4,390 milligrams per day.

All of the hospitals studied used rethermalization technologies and menus containing mostly outsourced prepared foods.

Hospitals and other public institutions increasingly serve prepared foods instead of making them from scratch, but more and more there is a backlash from the public demanding local, fresh and nutritious food.

Comments

Huge cuts in public sector wages predicted

The Ontario Financial Accountability Office (FAO) says that, with inflation, real wages in the public sector will decline 11.3% over the three year period 2021/2 - 2023/4 . This would radically deepen the trend towards lower wages during the last ten years. The FAO reports that since 2011, the average annual salary for the Ontario public sector employees (defined here as employees of schools, colleges, provincial government, provincial agencies, and hospitals) has increased by $10,385 -- or 1.6 per cent on average annually. This is the lowest increase of all the sectors and lower than inflation, which averaged 1.8 per cent per year. Over the ten years that would be about a 2% pay cut. The FAO reports that wage settlements were the lowest in the provincial public sector over the last decade: Hospital Wages Especially Challenged: The FAO predicts hospital wages will increase even less than in the public sector -- just ...

Too many public sector workers in Ontario?

Opponents of public services often try to portray the public sector as having grown disproportionately. In fact, since 1976, the number of public sector employees has not quite kept pace with the population. In 1976, the number of public sector employees in Ontario as reported by Statistics Canada averaged 830,800. By 2012, the number had increased to 1,330,700 -- a 60.2% increase. That sounds like significant growth -- true. But the population has increased from 8,413,779 in 1976 to 13,505,900 in 2012, a 60.5% increase. In other words, population growth has run slightly ahead of the growth in public sector employment. In 1976, close to 10% of the population worked in the public sector. It stayed pretty much this way until the Mike Harris government came to power when it dipped below 9%. It returned close to the historical range in the last six years or so, declining in 2012 to below the 1976 averag...

Are health care administrative expenses out of control in Ontario?

The Progressive Conservative government has justified its health restructuring plans with the claim that administrative expenses are much higher in Ontario than in Canada. When introducing the reforms, health minister Christine Elliott claimed , “Over the last five years, Ontario has spent 30% more than the Canadian average in administrative expenses on its health care system.” Elliott did not indicate her source of information. Presumably, however, the Progressive Conservatives are referring to the CIHI simplified and user friendly “ Your Health System ” graphs. Those graphs show “administrative expenses” in Ontario at 5.8% in Ontario while it is 4.5% in Canada. This CIHI measure is actually fairly narrowly defined. It is the percentage of “the legal entity’s” total expenses associated with the administrative, finance, human resources and communications functional centres. However “the legal entity” used for this estimate is [1] only...

Defend Public Healthcare

Search This Blog