After decades of hearing trash talk about their food, hospitals in recent years have worked to shed those negative stereotypes by offering tastier and more healthful alternatives to patients and visitors. And many in Maryland are going further, by using local, sustainably grown food.
Mercy Medical Center, for instance, buys organic produce and other food from local farms, said James Gray, an executive chef at the Baltimore hospital who was among those participating in a training session Oct. 14 at the Universities at Shady Grove in Rockville on cooking with local, sustainably grown food.
“The food at Mercy has changed a lot in the last 10 years,” Gray said. “We no longer buy much canned food. Most of our food is fresh.”
That is music to the ears of Susan B. Callahan, an instructor in hotel and restaurant management with the University of Maryland Eastern Shore at the Universities at Shady Grove. Using more locally produced food is a trend in the industry, she said.
“This is continuing education for them,” she said of the 15 or so chefs from hospitals, Gaithersburg food-service giant Sodexo and the National Institutes of Health who participated in the training.
Some of Callahan’s students also attended part of the training.
“It gives them a different perspective of the hospitality industry,” she said. “They are studying to be managers of hotels and restaurants, but at some point, they will have to run a kitchen.”
The training was offered at the Shady Grove campus for the first time. But Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment, an assistance and networking initiative that sponsored the program with the Universities at Shady Grove, has conducted similar programs since 2005, said Louise Mitchell, sustainable foods program manager for the initiative.
More than half of Maryland hospitals purchase fresh fruits and vegetables directly from local farmers or through distributors, according to the initiative, which is focusing more on local, sustainably raised poultry and other meat.
The program taught Tianna Feaster, a professional chef and owner of cooking consulting business Feast Your Eyes on This in Prince George’s County, how to save money when buying organic food.
“Buying organic doesn’t have to be expensive,” said Feaster, who offers cooking demonstrations at sites such as Suburban Hospital in Bethesda.
Students prepared beef stew and other dishes. Jakob Fatica, an executive chef at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, said he learned more about how to use carrots, potatoes and other vegetables, rather than flour, to thicken the stew.
“It was really tasty,” he said.
George Washington University Hospital hasn’t worked much with sustainably grown food but hopes to change that, said Tiffany Hightower, food operations manager at the Washington, D.C., hospital who works for Sodexo.
“We’re planning to go to local farms and see how we can work with them,” she said.
At Mercy, Gray said, he takes a personal interest in patients, often checking with them to get their feedback on the food.
“I believe my job is to help keep our patients healthy through offering them more nutritious food,” he said.
kshay@gazette.net
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