My friend Paula’s husband had surgery recently and guess what he was given by the nurses in the recovery room?
Shasta soda! Above is a picture of Rick shortly after Paula walked in to visit right after his surgery.
Let’s check out the ingredients of the Shasta soda and see if medical personnel should really be handing this stuff out to vulnerable people who have just had major surgery:
Shasta Soda: Carbonated Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Citric Acid, Potassium Benzoate (Preservative), Caramel Color, Sucralose, Natural Flavor, Salt
The big baddies I see in this ingredients list are:
High Fructose Corn Syrup: Calorie for calorie, high fructose corn syrup is more dangerous than white sugar as it is more likely to cause weight gain as published in the Journal of American Clinical Nutrition in 2004. Large amounts of fructose consumed such as what would happen with a can of soda turn quickly into triglycerides in the bloodstream or are stored as fat.
Not a very wise drink choice for recovering surgery patients or anyone for that matter!
Citric Acid: Manufactured from corn, very likely genetically modified. Citric acid coming from corn has traces of MSG in it which is a proven neurotoxin which triggers a wide variety of physical symptoms in many people some very severe.
Potassium Benzoate: A dangerous chemical preservative similar to sodium benzoate. I wrote a post awhile back on how sodium benzoate damages DNA and the link to neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s. Potassium Benzoate is in the same class of chemicals and should not be consumed particularly by vulnerable post-op patients!
Sucralose: This is an artificial sweetener that is manufactured by chlorinating natural sugar. The Sucralose Toxicity Information Center states that:
While it is unlikely that sucralose is as toxic as the poisoning people are experiencing from Monsanato’s aspartame, it is clear from the hazards seen in pre-approval research and from its chemical structure that years or decades of use may contribute to serious chronic immunological or neurological disorders.
Oh great. It’s slightly better than aspartame! Let’s serve it to hospital patients then!
Natural Flavor: The problem with “natural flavor” is that it is not natural. You never know what is hidden as this is an industry “catch all” label. It is best to avoid products that have “natural flavor” listed just to be on the safe side.
There is no doubt that it is highly irresponsible for hospital personnel to be handing out chemical and sugar laden drinks to post-op patients. What’s so hard about handing out plain carbonated water or at the very least, 100% fruit juice diluted with plain carbonated water to settle the stomach?
Why all the chemicals and dangerous sweeteners?
Do you really think it’s wise to be listening to these people for any sort of dietary advice?
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
The sad truth is that conventional medicine gives lip service to health. They don’t make any money by people being well, so the motivation is not there to keep people from returning over and over again. It is dangerous to listen to just about anything they have to say about preventative medicine as everything they do say is based on maximizing profits not keeping you vibrantly healthy over the long term.
This is so true.
There is no greater threat to ones health than the medical profession, unless it is the food industry.
Thankfully our hospital has a healthy thing going on… I forget the initiative. Buts it’s been adopted by the whole hospital and even cafeteria. They also push natural birth … When I recovered from going birth in Aug ’11, I was offered organic juices like cranberry and apple and filtered ice water.
Oh man, this has always bothered me. Yes, I’ve also had to argue with the medical establishment regarding food and care. I got my daughter released after her c-sec on the 2nd day, they knew I was serious when I said we’d sign the AMA paper. I was able to nurse her back to health quicker, thus, so she could nurse/bf her little one. Popscicles seem to be the standard.
Just recently, our babysitter went to a community clinic nutritionist. We were shocked by the things they told her. The most recommended cereal was fruit loops since it had all the vitamins and was enriched. That was just one of the things. Luckily, she babysat for us, and I taught her a crash course in whole real foods, chemicals, dyes, and real vitamins versus synthetic and well, everything I could. She was very angry that they played on her fear and ignorance of the english language and proper foods to eat. Come to find out, her diet was not as bad as she thought. I went over her families diet, and the worst thing was soda pop. Plus adding in more veggies in their largely hispanic diet.
So sad to think a nutritionist is handing out this type of information.
“Registered dietitians”, who operate in the criminal world of western medicine, are the ones responsible for serving patients these types of harmful “foods”. A woman told me that they were serving her father diet jello (complete with aspartame) as he attempted to recover from cancer “treatment” in the hospital. Support your local nutritionist before they are successful in completely outlawing him or her.
Oh, hospitals and anywhere that the conventional medical field can be found has terrible diets being handed out to sick people. The exact same people who should not be consuming any processed, chemical-laden food. Theres a McDonalds in the kids cancer center. Theres a soda vending machine in the hospital lobby. And nursing home patients are forced to consume the most abominable pseudo-food.
When I was pregnant with my first child I developed preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome. I was admitted to the hospital with sky high blood pressure. Since they were pretty sure I needed to have a c-section some time in the near future they would not let me eat or drink anything. After a few days I was offered “chicken broth” – which to my horror was nothing more than a packet of msg!!! I looked at the nurse in shock and asked if they would recommend that I consume that with my blood pressure being so high. She seemed taken aback and went to see if she could find anything low sodium to offer me. She came back with a Popsicle (food coloring and corn syrup). After I finally had the c-section, I was finally told I could have real food. The first thing they offered me was burger and fries – and keep in mind this is after several days of fasting!!!!!!!
If I needed to get my glucose up after fasting or surgery I’d rather just chug some good ole homemade sugar water (pure glucose) or some fresh squeezed unpasturized juice.
I recently wrote a lengthy draft and sent it to a local State Legislator, who is also a personal friend and fellow church-goer. We’ve discussed many things which should be changed, over the years. My draft was in regard to letting families of folks who are in long-term care or nursing homes provide them with supplements and other health related items if the family members are willing to sign a waiver of responsbility. It’s just crazy that we are forced to do things like this in order to give an elderly person some sea salt or some Vitamin D3. Right now the State laws do not permit family members to bring in anything except clothing items and personal things like toothpaste (which is so full of sugar I wouldn’t give it to a dog I didn’t like).
My friend the Legislator is going to see what she can do to get others in power to at least look into doing SOMETHING about this. Our medical industrial complex considers vitamins and food to be drugs because that’s the way our overall system is set up. It’s rotten to the core and everyone knows it, even the people involved in making the original legislation know it, but they are loathe to stand up to the formidable FDA slobs. We need to get find someone with a backbone who will get rid of Michael Taylor at the FDA and then maybe something can START to be done about the whole mess.
Don’t hold yer breath, though.
Maybe I’m just overly cynical, but does anyone think that in feeding nursing home patients so badly, they’re actually expecting them to live fewer years (or desiring it??) to free up space for other peoploe? I mean… heaven forbid they are actually fed something HEALTHY and nutritious… they might actually live a LONG time! AND then there will be less need to actually pump them full of medication (that odds are they wouldn’t need if they weren’t eating the abysmal diet prescribed to them).
well, that’s probably a bit much. it really, however, just goes back to the bottom line – those are for-profit orgs, so they want to reduce costs as much as possible – and we all know, garbage food is cheap.
I am an RN and used to work in the recovery room. The “food” that we would hand out is ridiculous. I worked in a pediatric hospital recovery room and we would hand out the worst crap to them. At least sometimes we would give out juice but that is the healthiest thing we gave out. When I worked on the oncology unit at the same pediatric hospital you should have seen the “food” on the menu. It looked like a combo of every fast food joint I have ever seen. We had some kids that did not want to leave the hosptial because they liked the food so much more than at home. I now work in adult ICU and the food there is tube feed (ewwww), and also we have for those that can eat…SODA! and of course a few varieties of juice. I may need to have some outpatient surgery and I plan on taking my own recovery food because they pawn off soda and crackers neither of which do I eat.
After I delivered my last child, I called the Nutrition department to complain about the meals I was offered. Day 1, I was on a liquid diet: soda, chicken broth, tea, juice, jello and water were brought to me. Then, the next 3 days were just as bad. Every meal had 2 breads and cake for dessert. I asked for a salad and they brought a plate with a handful of iceberg lettuce on it, topped with at least a 1/4 cup of each of the following: bacon, egg, cheese and chicken. Then a 1/4 cup total of carrots, tomatoes and cucumbers. Then, I had the choice of 2 salad dressings: ranch or Italian. I was so disgusted! In the end, nothing has changed. Such a same!