Health-care system’s flatlining fare no recipe for healing

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This article was published 13/04/2024 (562 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Technically speaking, I suppose it qualified as a grilled-cheese sandwich. The bread was toasted at one point. It was moist now from sitting warm in a plastic dome and collecting humidity in a rethermalization unit for hours. The cheese had been melted. Even though it was now more aptly described as congealed. I was curious. I knew it was probably going to be gross, but I took a bite anyway. It was disgusting and, sadly, that would be my last grilled-cheese sandwich ever.

Where on Earth was I served this terrible sandwich? This was lunch at Deer Lodge Centre. Special delivery from the Regional Distribution Facility (RDF). Doesn’t that sound yummy? It sounds more like a widget factory or rugby team, not a place that makes thousands of meals a day.

The RDF’s existence is thanks to then-premier Gary Filmon’s decision in the 1990s to shut down most hospital and personal care-home kitchens in Winnipeg and make meals en-masse on an assembly line in St. Boniface. The rationale was that it would be more efficient and save money.

The meals are trucked out to health-care sites where they are held in thermal units that keep the hot side of the tray hot and the cold side cold. At least in theory. In practice, you end up with weird temperatures and weird textures. It could have been worse. Filmon could have privatized meals. There was huge public backlash about frozen meals being shipped in from other places, and thus the RDF was created and is operated under the umbrella of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority.

The scrambled eggs are always petrified or turn to dust. The macaroni and cheese is sometimes so hard from being reheated that it crunches. The toast makes me think of beavers because it’s like gnawing on a piece of bark. They have to add the bananas as they pass the trays out because they go black in the thermal units. Nobody drinks the coffee they send. It tastes vile, to put it mildly.

The salad is an oversized piece or two of iceberg lettuce and a lone wedge of the saddest looking tomato ever. It’s usually green, never ripe. You get salad once or maybe twice a week. I’m a vegetarian and they seem to think all we eat is egg-salad sandwiches. Seriously. I was getting egg-salad sandwiches sometimes for both lunch and dinner for days on end.

The food is mostly processed. It’s either undercooked or overcooked. They once had a shortage of crackers that lasted months. How is that even possible?

I’ve lived at both Riverview Health Centre and Deer Lodge. They both get their food from the RDF. I couldn’t get cheese sandwiches at Riverview but could at Deer Lodge. We weren’t “cheese-worthy” at Riverview, I guess. However, I could choose my food at Riverview, cheese sandwich notwithstanding. At Deer Lodge, I can’t. It’s coming from the same place, so why can I choose at one facility but not the other? It’s moot now that I am on IV nutrition called TPN, but it still irritates me on principle. It makes absolutely no sense.

A lot of the food ends up in the trash because it is gross. Or the wrong temperature. Or the texture is off. Prisoners eat healthier, better-quality, more cheaply produced food than hospital patients and long-term care residents. They also get larger portions and more food in general. Patients eat lower-quality food that costs more per meal, per patient, and is mostly processed.

This is a terrible thing for residents in long-term care who only get food from the RDF, because it puts them at risk for malnutrition. Diet in long-term care is important in preventing things like bedsores and even falls. The complications from both can be deadly.

It would be difficult to go back to on-site kitchens because that space, in most places, has been repurposed. New facilities have also been built without kitchens. There was talk of expanding the RDF under the former Progressive Conservative government, as they wanted to close the two largest kitchens: Health Sciences Centre and St. Boniface General Hospital. But the RDF would need to expand significantly to be able to accommodate all the additional meals. Then COVID-19 hit and, well, there are now much bigger fish to fry.

Losing the ability to eat wasn’t too much of a loss, if I’m being honest. But I do think something needs to be done about the quality and amount of processed food served to sick people. I think people, particularly long-term care residents, should be able to pick things they actually want to eat. It would help cut down on waste and it also gives them some control when they are in a situation where they largely have no say about anything.

Just don’t choose the grilled cheese.

Shawna (Shoshana) Forester Smith is a 41-year-old chronically ill, disabled Ojibwe writer and health-care advocate who lives on a chronic-care unit at Deer Lodge Centre. Shawna worked for years in the head office of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and has a master’s degree in health leadership. She also has spent over 14 years being a patient with all kinds of experiences, including being on life support.