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Chef Charles Rubin of Henrico Doctors' Hospital (Photo by Sarah Walor)
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Rubin's jerk chicken, roasted fresh root vegetables and basmati rice with a cilantro garnish (Photo by Sarah Walor)
If you want to change public perceptions of hospital food, you sometimes have to be sneaky.
Or at least stealthy.
Just ask Barbara Ragland, clinical nutrition manager for Bon Secours St. Mary’s Hospital, where she’s served 18 years.
You want food that tastes great, but you want it to be healthy. And for the professionals serving up food en masse at these facilities, you want your consumers to know that hospital food is long removed from the days of clunky trays moving through a long line to receive the processed “square meal” of the day.
“We’re trying to beat the stigma of hospital food,” she says. And that’s where stealth comes into play. Seemingly decadent food can be packed with nutrition. Subtle adaptations in placement and presentation promote healthier options. And cafeteria food can be marketed to seem as if it’s from another source altogether.
For example, the food truck concept has come to St. Mary’s in the form of a featured cuisine each quarter. In March, it was fresh seafood served in a mini seafood restaurant that was set up in the cafeteria and called the Tackle Box. On a recent Friday, it was serving dishes including fresh mahi-mahi fish tacos, with a purple cabbage slaw available for a topping and a fresh-cut tropical fruit salad as a side.
The Tackle Box had been preceded by a barbecue restaurant in which the employees wore different uniforms. St. Mary’s workers loved it, but it looked so different that some thought the food was brought in from a barbecue joint, says Patrick Simmons, senior director, food and nutrition services for Bon Secours St. Mary’s. His kitchen on a given day prepares 985 meals for patients and feeds 1,375 meals in its cafeteria.
Simmons and Ragland are motivated missionaries of healthy eating, proselytizing nurses by bringing them samples of patient food on catering trays and visiting with patients in rooms for feedback and to educate on better diets and nutrition.
They also employ more subtle tactics in their work.
One way the stealth comes into play is in packing nutrition or healthier alternatives into a dish, such as using chickpeas in a recipe for orange muffins, or applesauce in chocolate cake.
Stealth also is employed in terms of presentation and packaging.
Changes in placement encourage healthier choices. At the cashier counters at St. Mary’s, impulse buys include fresh fruit and bottled water. The eye-level display features baked chips. Stickers on a cooler promote healthier choices, though desserts are packed inside. Various bottles of water in different shapes, colors and sizes catch the eye, a better choice over sugary drinks.
Sometimes healthy options hide in plain sight, such as at VCU Health, where there’s an open kitchen concept in the main cafeteria. “Everything is cooked right in front of the customer,” says Michele D’Amato, retail director for Aramark, the service that contracts with VCU to provide food services.
Its 400-seat cafeteria was renovated and reopened in February. D’Amato says it offers a variety of healthy food choices, more quiet space, and a better flow to minimize waits and to improve its ambiance. The main cafeteria has a circular layout, with a salad bar in its center surrounded by various stations for pizza, soup, entrées and other items. Each day, the cafeteria serves about 2,700 meals.
On site, there is an executive chef, Anthony Jones, and a chef manager, Kris Guss, who have more than 40 years of experience in high volume operations throughout the Southeast.
Menus are cycled through every three weeks at VCU. That allows for a variety of selections and seasonal updates. “From Southern favorites to Latin selections, there is something for everyone,” D’Amato says.
At Henrico Doctors’ Hospital, there’s a salad bar, soup station, grill station, entrée station, dessert station and a to-go area. Menus provide information and are designed to encourage healthy choices. About a third of items on a given day are considered healthy choices.
“The negative saying, ‘It’s hospital food’ does not pertain to us,” says David Coram, director of Food and Nutrition Services at Henrico Doctors’ Hospital for Sodexo, the food company that has contracted for one and a half years with HCA. “We can be the bright spot in a person’s day.” Onsite executive chef Charles Rubin, who is also a dietitian, says quality is a paramount concern, and that can be a challenge in a high-volume facility (about 700 meals a day to patients and to workers and visitors).
The hospitals use locally sourced, fresh ingredients whenever possible. Vegetables and fruits are locally sourced in season. At St. Mary’s, sweet potatoes were grown by Kirby Farms in Mechanicsville.
Healthy is the watchword, but some things are harder to change.
Ragland notes that even with the healthy options, one longtime St. Mary’s menu standard remains a favorite: fried chicken. There also are desserts, some sugary drinks and snacks as well.
Stress, hurt and pain are inevitable in a hospital setting, so the comfort food remains.
“We are here to provide that break that all people need,” says Coram of Henrico Doctors’. “If you are working, you can escape for a short time, relax and maybe talk with friends. For visitors, our goal is to be open and welcoming. We want to give them the opportunity to decompress.”
But you may just have to work a bit to find the comfort food you crave.
Sure, there are doughnuts, says Simmons, “but you have to seek out the unhealthy.”
