For the past six months, inpatients receiving care at Vancouver Coastal Health’s (VCH) Vancouver General Hospital have been able to fuel their healing with a diverse selection of new delicious, nutritious and environmentally sustainable menu items, thanks to a Planetary Health Menu Pilot project.
“We started this project with the goal of creating flavourful, comforting meals using fresh, nutritionally dense ingredients so that patients had appealing food options to help them in their healing and recovery,” says said Darcia Pope, VP, strategy, innovation and planetary health at VCH. “We also recognized that this project presented an opportunity to look at how we could adjust our food services program to be more environmentally sustainable.”
The Planetary Health Menu Pilot project was led by Dr. Annie Lalande, surgical resident and PhD student in resources, environment and sustainability at University of British Columbia, and Tiffany Chiang, director, food service transformation and strategic projects at VCH. They brought together food services staff, dietitians, clinicians and planetary health experts to work alongside Ned Bell, renowned chef and sustainable food champion, in developing the menu items.
More than 20 new menu items have been developed to offer patients a diversity of choices, including dishes such as Steelhead Trout with Tomato Miso Dressing, Creamy Coconut Chickpea Curry with Cauliflower and Cashews, served with Mango Chutney and a Korean Gochujang Bowl. The new dishes were evaluated by patient partners who provided valuable feedback on the meal’s desirability during times of illness. Dishes that were favourably reviewed were served on a trial basis to inpatients at Vancouver General Hospital. Feedback was solicited through surveys and interviews throughout the process, and helped tailor the dishes to patient preferences. Food waste rates were also measured to complement patient feedback in determining how the new dishes were received.
“We’ve long used the phrase ‘food is medicine’ and we’re finding that this is true not only for patients but for our planet as well,” says Dr. Lalande. “Providing tasty, nutritious meals, which is critical to recovery from illness and injury, also presents a significant opportunity to decrease our environmental footprint by focusing on lower-impact ingredients.”
“Sustainable food and food systems have been a passion of mine throughout my career,” says Bell. “Working to develop menu items that are sustainable and also appeal to a wide variety of tastes on such a massive scale was challenging, but the work we’ve done here has been so rewarding.”
The Planetary Health Menu Pilot has recently concluded. During the coming months, following data analysis, the menu items that patients enjoyed the most will be incorporated into menus across VCH. —Vita Daily
share:
Be the first to comment