California children’s hospitals aren’t dishing up particularly healthful fare, a new study shows. Researchers from UCLA and the Rand Corp. report in the journal Academic Pediatrics that of the 16  food venues serving 14 hospitals studied in July 2010, 81% offered unhealthful “impulse items” — think freezers stocked with ice-cream treats — near the cash register. Only 31% offered nutrition information at the point of purchase, while just 25% sold whole-wheat bread. Half the hospital cafeterias offered no healthful entrees  — defined as having no more than 800 calories (650 for sandwiches), no more than 30% of calories from fat and 10% from saturated fat. In fact, of the 384 entrees or sandwiches served by the hospitals, only 7% were categorized as healthful, the study says. There was some good news: all the cafeterias studied offered low-fat or skim milk and diet soda, while 94% offered fruit without added sugar. Three-quarters had a salad bar and non-fried veggies, and more than half offered low-fat or fat-free salad dressing. The cafeterias aren’t directly serving the young hospital patients, though, so why does it matter whether they’re selling cookies and fried foods?

Two reasons, says Lenard Lesser, primary investigator of the study and a family-medicine physician at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. First, he says, there’s an educational piece. “Hospitals should be exemplars of healthy eating because they’re places of health,” he tells the Health Blog. ( Previous research cited by the study authors found that families surveyed at a children’s hospital with an on-site McDonald’s were twice as likely to think the restaurant’s food was healthful than families surveyed at hospitals without a McDonald’s.) Second, “lots of people come through the hospital to see a pediatrician or another doctor, and they may eat at the hospital’s food venue,” says Lesser. And “besides patients and visitors there are thousands of staff who eat their meals there,” he says. “Hospitals have a vested interest in getting their employees” to eat healthfully, he says. Lesser says some of the hospitals studied have already made changes — things like lowering the price of salad-bar items and eliminating sugary beverages. The study was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Image: iStockphoto

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Must Hospital Cafeteria Food Be Healthful?