Dive Brief:
- The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a nonprofit organization in Washington DC, wants hospitals to stop selling fast food to patients and employees.
- The PCRM surveyed more than 200 hospitals and found several that were serving food from McDonald's, Chick-fil-A and Wendy's; many of the hospitals that were serving fast food were located in areas with high obesity rates.
- The committee reviewed five contracts between hospitals and fast food restaurants and found that hospitals were being incentivized to help the restaurants sell more "junk food."
Dive Insight:
What do those incentives look like? The report found in one example in Houston, the McDonald's at Ben Taub General Hospital "can terminate its lease if yearly gross sales of Big Macs and other junk foods do not reach $1 million. Moreover, the monthly rent McDonald's pays to the hospital increases based on food sales."
In a June, 2013 article published in the British Medical Journal, Cardiologist Aseem Malhotra of the Royal Free Hospital in London criticized the sale of fast food in hospitals, saying that the junk food industry has been allowed to hijack the very institutions that are supposed to set an example: our hospitals.