https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/he...nks-astonishing

Not surprized. Hospital food on par with school food, here in US.

Remembering one meal, after emergency surgery so staff decided my meal. Gone was green beans, and squash; replaced by anything and everything WHITE. I didnt eat.

Coca Cola and Pepsi, as mentioned in the article, both have a wide range of non-caloric bottled drinks, including water so I find it hard to get too exercised that they supply drinks to hospitals. I am assuming they are not serving coke with the patients' meals (but probably are serving juice!).

At least I can get a water or diet coke from the vending machine, but rarely do I see almonds or any type of nut in the vending machine unless it's in the form of a sugar laden trail mix. "Baked" chips or other low fat stuff, they have that too.

The hospital cafeterias are not much better though there might be a salad bar which may or may not have protein to go with the greens.

Yes, not much better. I've been there done that when a relative was there for days on end.
Salad with no meat is basically low fat with a spike of surgery dressing. For me, that is a starvation diet.
I remember there were islands of foods and every single one was carbs and sugars.
Then again, how many nurses and other hospital staff are sick themselves after eating there daily.

I did a lot of visits to a 7th Day Adventist hospital during a friend's prolonged stay. The cafeteria there was mostly vegetarian, lots of quinoa and veggies. I had a hard time doing low carb there too.

My friend's patient meals were not vegetarian, but they were low sodium and the desserts they served were very low sugar. She hated the food, and I couldn't blame her!

Medical staff are among the worst: shift work, poor sleep, grabbing convenience foods and what's in the cafeteria. Recipe for metabolic disaster.

Yes, unless they bring their food, they are literally held captive because there is not enough time to leave, find healthy food and then return in time.

I just can't imagine why a hospital would have Coke as a sponsor.
It's all about the money and to hell with patient care.

To be fair, they're not sponsoring the hospital per se, from what I can tell from this article. It's not like they're bribing them into pushing sugary drinks by buying them a new MRI machine or something. It's an exclusivity deal, and they do this all the time. They're basically saying, "you already sell these drinks - we'll give you a discount if you sign a contract saying you'll only sell what we distribute, and you sell absolutely no PepsiCo or other outside products."

I first encountered this when I went to University in the 90s. I was royally ticked off to discover that there was absolutely no Diet Pepsi anywhere on campus.

I always see the residents sucking down Diet Coke and salad. I don't know how they survive.

Coke and Pepsi compete for the contracts with universities, fast food joints etc. My university went with Pepsi (which funded a couple of scholarships, at the beginning, at least), so I had to bring my Diet Coke in from home - it did help me cut back to one a day, though. The A&W was allowed to sell fountain-only Coke products due to a pre-existing contract, but no cans or bottles. Our main rival was a Coke-only university and once the contracts were in place some kids chose which one to attend depending on their preference for Coke or Pepsi.

There are also some places with contracts in place from Coca-Cola Co. or PepsiCo that don't sell Coke or Pepsi. Both companies make and bottle a lot of other beverages including iced tea, water, even milk.

Coca-Cola owns Odwalla, Honest Tea, Dasani, Fairlife (milk), Smart Water, Vitamin Water, and Zico Coconut water, as well as several juice brands like Minute Maid and Simply Orange.

PepsiCo owns Aquafina, Tropicana, Naked, Bubly, Propel, Izze, One (coconut water).

Obviously, the majority of what both these companies make and sell are full of added sugar. But it's possible for them to supply a range of drinks including many with lower sugar, no sugar or artificial sweeteners. The contracts can specify that they want certain things supplied. The issue isn't that the hospitals have a contract with a beverage supplier--it's whether the hospital is ensuring that they're not just supplying sugar and more sugar.

I see the problem in terms of whether people want to drink sugar water--rather than in terms of whether the hospital supplies it. You're sick, or pregnant, or you just work there--now you're in the hospital, so your right to decide what to eat or drink is at an end? This is a little different for me from when Big Soda provides research dollars to make themselves look good, or to steer research towards exercise and away from dietary (sugary) causes of ill health, etc.



They can dictate supply, but not demand. If a vending machine gives six types of water, and four types of soda, what do you think will sell? Ooh, I was going to have a root beer, but they've given me six types of water to choose from, and they all look so good... yeah, right.

Well.... when my boss caved to many requests for fruit in the vending machine , he negotiated a new contract to include apples and oranges and bananas as well as the prepackaged sandwiches.

Fruit cleaned out nearly every day.

Perhaps offering water as well as soda is a step in the right direction , even if it is only one water to 20 sodas...

But you've described a situation where everybody was asking for fruit. Fill some random vending machine with fruit, you might get a different outcome.

Personally I'm happy with tap water. As long as it's run through some coffee beans or had a tea bag in it for a while.

Lol, yes run thru a tea bag is terrific!!

My family looks for water, not soda, usually. The Community center, with members focused on gym or weight room activities, has an entire vending machine devoted to bottled water.

Imho, more people than we realize, want water over soda if given the opportunity.