Kaiser Permanente commits to healthier food for patients, staff

Oct. 8—Kaiser Permanente, the Oakland, Calif.-based healthcare organization, has signed a commitment with the Partnership for a Healthier America to improve food offerings in its 37 hospitals.

Kaiser Permanente has a long-standing focus on promoting healthy eating, including pioneering efforts to bring healthy food to its hospital cafeterias, vending machines and patient food service. With this announcement, the organization is building on those efforts by offering more fruits and vegetables in cafeterias and on hospital meal trays, providing healthier beverages and meal options with fewer calories, less saturated fat and a balance of nutritious ingredients, and promoting a wide variety of healthy food and beverages to its workforce.

"As a health care organization, we have an obligation to provide the healthiest food possible in order to promote the total health of our members and our workforce," said Bernard Tyson, Kaiser Permanente's president and chief operating officer. "Problems like obesity and diabetes require us to redouble our efforts to make the healthy choice the easy, affordable and convenient choice. And health care organizations need to lead the way."