If Bow River fly fishers live long enough, they may end up being forced to eat slop, masquerading as food, in Alberta Health Services senior care homes.
Food critic John Gilchrist sampled some of this 'food'. He was dismayed at what he found, and said that if it was possible to give it a rating of less than 0 of of 10, that's what it would get.
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| Alberta's long-term care home seniors are eating from a new menu. The quality of the food is examined in this video produced by the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees. Photograph by: Screen greb, AUPE |
Alberta Health Services under fire for food quality at senior care homes (with video)
By Jamie Komarnicki,
Calgary Herald;
With Files From Bryce Forbes, Calgary Herald
June 7, 2012
The province's largest union and the Wildrose party are both taking the Alberta Health Services superboard to task for "trucking in" precooked, unappetizing food to seniors in smaller care homes.
Seniors in care homes and small health facilities operated by AHS are served poor-quality heat-and-serve dishes, in some cases brought in from outside the province, that some residents can't bring themselves to eat, contended the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees in a documentary released this week.
Wildrose seniors critic Kerry Towle called the 14-minute AUPE video "shocking" and said the Tory government is forcing the province's seniors to "live off leftovers in their golden years.
"They need to go back to the kitchen. They need to actually produce and make food that is edible," Towle said.
EDITORIAL
Unpalatable
Seniors in care homes deserve better than trucked-in food
Calgary Herald
Published: Friday, June 08, 2012
Food is one of life's great pleasures, especially for seniors who must live out their last years in longterm care facilities.
Their food should be nutritious, obviously, but it should also be delicious. It should be produced and prepared as locally as possible so that it is fresh and appetizing.
Instead, in a truly horrifying video released this week, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees exposes the poor quality of the pre-packaged food trucked in from other provinces and from the U.S., which is being served to seniors in 78 of Alberta's smaller nursing homes and hospitals in mostly rural settings.
The video, appropriately titled: Hard to Swallow, features Herald food writer and restaurant critic John Gilchrist sampling a meal at the Stettler Hospital and Care Centre.
"I'm appalled at the food we had at the Stettler care facility," Gilchrist says. "As low as my expectations were, they managed to somehow exceed them. . . . I didn't think that some of that food those people were served even existed anymore."
Gilchrist adds, "The gravy is just glue, the potatoes are obscene." The dinner he sampled, "reminded me of the TV dinners of the early '60s with the watery potatoes and the glossy gravy that came from no place natural, and the meats that really have no texture or taste. I've eaten a lot of bad food in a lot of dodgy situations. This is the worst food I've had in years. Absolutely dreadful."
Gilchrist's indictment is echoed by residents and their family members who call it "dog food," and say things like, "What they call Oriental beef is something brown, with brownish water drizzled over it."
Susan Slade, a licensed practical nurse and AUPE member, contradicts Health Minister Fred Horne's assertion that the food is nutritionally sound.
"You're boiling stuff and taking the vitamins and minerals out of it. You're pre-packaging roast beef for 70 days. How can there be any nutrition left in that?" she asks.
Slade says staff have seen an increase in residents with urinary tract infections and slow wound healing since the meals were introduced as part of a 21-day rotating menu plan in December 2009.
Two summers ago, AHS sent independent consultants to the facilities to interview residents about the food. According to AHS, the residents were mostly satisfied. However, many of these people suffer from dementia, and are not reliable respondents. As one woman says in the video, "They don't even know what they had for breakfast, let alone how good it was."
No savings have been realized, either - AHS's own figures show the cost of feeding seniors in these facilities has risen six per cent since they started trucking in the food, according to the video.
Alberta has an abundance of quality meat and fresh produce. Seniors in care homes should be sharing in that bounty. The fresher the food, the more nutritious it is, too.
The province owes it to seniors to source their food locally and ensure meals are as pleasurable as possible. How shameful that seniors who have helped build this province are being forced to eat food that none of our legislators would ever dream of eating themselves.
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