Going Against the Grain

In early 2011, I was speaking with a co-worker about the food situation where we work at Seattle Children's Hospital and we began to formulate an idea of meeting to speak with leaders and management to propose several ideas for potentially creating a food change in our cafeteria.  We met with a group known as the Obesity Advocacy Team and they were so enthusiastic about our project and wanted to form a sub-group interested in creating change in the cafeteria and supported us in going to speak with leadership.  However, we found that once we went to speak with the leadership people the support began to wane; people would not answer our e-mails and questions any longer and we were told that Seattle Children's was not interested in devoting money to overhauling or creating change in the cafeteria at the time.  We were also told by one of the food coordinators, "We are not going to tell families what is healthy and what is not healthy.  These families are here under great amounts of stress and we are not going to tell them whether or not it is o.k. to eat a bag o M&M's.  We will offer more healthy options in our vending machines and in the cafeteria and hope that families choose those options over the other choices."