Hospital in Pennsylvania Using Organic Produce to Heal Patients

Hospital feeding organic food to patients

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine thy food” is what founder of modern medicine Hippocrates said way back in 431 B.C. Today a Pennsylvania hospital is doing exactly that, healing patients by feeding them organic produce during their stay.

Despite the founder of modern medicine urging the use of food as medicine, here we are, more than 2500 years later being pushed by physicians and corporate advertisements to take drugs for our ills.  Most people have quickly come to terms with the fact that virtually all pharmaceutical drugs we’re told to take are toxic to the human body and do not heal any of our health issues.

Organic food is healthy because it contains no harmful genetically modified organisms, herbicides or pesticides, and in a review of 343 studies was found by scientists to overwhelmingly contain more nutrients than conventionally grown produce.

In partnership with St. Luke’s University Health Network, the Rodale Institute launched a farm to hospital food program, dedicating 5 acres of the university’s farmland to providing fresh, organic produce for patient meals and cafeterias in a network of 6 hospitals.

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In 2014, Farmer Lynn Trizna has grown 5 acres of vegetables for the hospitals, and has plans to expand that to 15 acres in 2015.  In her own estimation, in the 2014 growing season, a total of 44,000 lbs of produce from her organic farm will be served in the hospitals.  Lynn is paid a salary by the Rodale Institute and has employed 3 staff members who are all aspiring farmers.
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Moving into the future, the Rodale Institute and St. Luke’s envision the program expanding to include fifteen to twenty farmers, greenhouses that allow for year-round production, and a cannery to preserve the produce so nothing goes to waste.

Furthermore, they wish to reproduce and establish their organic-food-to-hospital distribution model in every hospital in the U.S.

Finally, with the use of organic food for hospital patients, maybe hospitals will actually begin healing patients rather than killing them with toxic food, noxious hospital environments, and unnecessary drug interventions.
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