I try to avoid hospitals like the plague. I certainly wouldn't check myself into one unless my arm was hanging off; but, I have visited a few to see relatives. In every hospital I've ever visited, I've always seen a fast food chain or a cafeteria that smelled alarmingly like my high school cafeteria (where the menu was anything but nutritious), and multiple vending machines. As the CNN article points out, there is some serious cognitive dissonance when an institution that claims dedication to the health of it's clients offers them some of the very foods that are more than likely responsible for the diseases that necessitated the trip to the hospital.

Hopefully, the days of nutritionally void menus are numbered. Farmers markets, which are a growing trend all over the states, are starting to pop around hospitals, offering fresh picked, organic produce. I'm becoming a big fan of local, farmer markets. Watchers of Know The Cause will know that Doug often contends that the source of exposure to mold and mycotoxins is in the storage of food. Farmers markets bring produce right off the vine to the the eater, eliminating that risky storage step and lowering the chances of contamination.

I think we are finally starting to see the medical community come around on the importance of diet. It is a slow transition, but they can not, in light of all of the evidence supporting diet's role in degenerative disease, keep telling patients it is ok to eat fried, fast, and processed food. We should probably allow for this slow transition - otherwise patients and doctors might all of the sudden find out their relationship is unnecessary when patients are eating right.