This week, IoM Friends of the Earth’s Cat Turner wonders whether Nobles Hospital could take a leaf (possibly an organic lettuce leaf) out of the books of an enlightened Detroit hospital.
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It was Hippocrates (460-370BC) who said it best: ‘Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food’.
It’s hard to overstate the extent to which good, fresh food can boost your health and mood – or how chemical-ridden, nutrient-free stodge can contribute to a really unhappy life.
So it was great, this week, to read about a hospital based in Detroit, which has decided to take matters into its own hands and ensure the best possible diet for its patients and workers.
The facility has hit the news by opening a $1m organic greenhouse and garden, where it’s now producing a truly mind-boggling array of vegetables, fruits, salads and herbs in its 1,500 square feet of space.
The staff are growing at least 5 types of kale alone (and kale is a real powerhouse of nutrition). In addition there are a mindboggling 23 types of heirloom tomatoes, plus strawberries, microgreens (that’s the sprouted seedlings of various plants, which are absolutely harvested at their most nutritious and are absolutely bursting with vitamins), and various types of squash, aubergines, hot and sweet peppers, herbs and much more.
The growing space is being put to other really good uses too –its leafy lobby makes a wonderful venue meetings, entertaining, teaching schoolchildren and musical events. It also gives patients somewhere terrific to hang out in the day, which I imagine is a big morale-booster for long-stay folks who are missing their gardens.
Credit for this inspiring project has to go to the hospital’s CEO Gerard van Grinsven, who decided that the facility should be about ‘well care, not sick care’, and it’s part of a wider range of initiatives he’s started.
It made me wonder why we don’t put all that open space around Nobles Hospital to similar use.
After all, whilst there’d be an initial cost, the list of benefits is persuasive: the Detroit hospital is ensuring its patients get the very best diet they possibly can, and saves a massive amount on bought produce.
In addition, it’s established a farmers market where the surplus is sold and its own café has become a popular destination for diners even when they’ve no hospital business: apparently it’s a real money-spinner. The menu includes a huge and colourful organic salad bar, teas made from the hospital’s own-grown herbs, fresh fruit smoothies and juices and an array of main courses supplemented by vegetables so fresh they’re practically still alive.
The hospital gardeners work closely with the kitchen staff, and they also get advice from those doctors with a particular interest in nutrition – so they can select plants to grow for great taste, but also for particular nutrient quality.
It’s particularly interesting to consider how the produce is used not just for catering purposes, but increasingly also medically (instead of relying on commercially-manufactured pharmaceuticals). Readers might remember that I wrote a fortnight ago about the wide array of hedgerow remedies available to intrepid foragers – but of course there are many cultivated plant remedies too, and they can be at least as powerful as their pharmaceutical equivalents.
I’m not recommending a return to the dark ages here – as recently as the 1930s, around 90 per cent of medicines prescribed by doctors or bought over the counter were derived from herbs, and it’s only since the rise of the big pharmaceutical companies that we’ve been press-ganged into abandoning these for expensive, synthetic alternatives.
For example, a typical treatment for battle wounds in the Fisrt World War involved garlic (a natural antibiotic) and sphagnum moss (which makes a great natural antiseptic dressing).
It’s nice to envisage our local hospital cultivating some of its own treatments, and keeping its funds out of the hands of Big Pharma.
And imagine the difference in food miles!
Aside from the helpful impact on the environment, food that’s freshly picked has a much higher nutrient content than that which has been travelling for several days or weeks before it hits the supermarket shelves.
But of course it’s not just the age of a carrot that destroys its vitamin content (though that plays a big part): just as important is the quality of the soil it’s grown in, and here again the Detroit hospital has scored a big ‘win’, because it’s farming organically, without the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides which so undermine soil, and therefore plant, health.
The British Food Journal once published a study which compared the vitamin and mineral content of 20 different types of vegetable, as they were in 1930 against what was available in 1980.
It found that the average calcium content had plummeted by 19 per cent, iron by 22 per cent, and potassium by 14 per cent. Alarmingly, a similar study around the time also found that you’d need to eat eight oranges today to get the same level of Vitamin A that your grandparents would have gained from just one!
So there are lots of persuasive reasons why something along these lines might be considered – from cost savings and job creation, to better patient care, and from new sources of income (farmers market and café) to general wellbeing and loveliness! I’d be in favour of it, wouldn’t you?