Thank goodness for American hospital food

June 3, 10:06 AMSouth St. Paul ExaminerRob Shirk

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Hospital Food

Hospital food has been vilified by the American population for as long as I can remember. Thank goodness we don't live in some parts of Europe.

A friend of a friend of mine was traveling back to Minnesota when he became ill and was hospitalized in Amsterdam, Holland. Amsterdam is as much of a world city as there is, known for its loose moral laws and as a magnet for art. Hookers, hashish, and Rembrandt, you know.

As he was recovering, his first lunch consisted of a cheese sandwich. OK, I guess. His dinner consisted of a different cheese on different bread but a cheese sandwich, nevertheless. The morning breakfast consisted of fruit...and cheese. He spent quite a while in Amsterdam and even though we are in close proximity to Wisconsin, what he ever liked about cheese before had evaporated into the lowland bogs of The Netherlands.

While in Italy, another friend of a friend was waylaid. Patients were to rely on family to provide food and there was also an array of independent vendors outside the hospital where you could buy a morsel of food if you family happened to be three or four thousand miles away. This was not some forgotten hovel in the mountains, but a major city like Milan or Bologna.

Neither of these tales can be quoted or officially proved by exact names of patients or hospital names, but they were told to me in a fashion that I was to believe them. They are my friends, after all so I'll borrow a page from the right wing blogosphere and write like some where I'll ask you to believe me, corroborated or not.

As I was hospitalized recently I had to raise my eyebrows as the patient sharing the room complained that the three choices of dinner combinations were awful and inadequate. Regions Hospital in St. Paul in a first rate hospital and has saved my dinner buns more than a few times. They are not, and have never claimed to be, a five star restaurant.

The food was always better than a cheese sandwich.

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