Rx for health: Local food?

There are myriad reasons to buy locally grown foods.

The taste of just-picked, vine-ripened fruit. The desire to support local farmers. The prospect of saving money and energy by skipping the shipping and the middleman.

This summer, Omaha health care providers are bringing another reason to the forefront: local food's ties to good health.

They're putting farmers markets in the places people go to get well: hospitals and health centers.

Alegent Health quietly tested the concept late last summer and offered this season's first hospital-based farmers market June 23 at Midlands Hospital in Papillion. The Omaha-based health system now rotates its midday Tuesday farmers markets weekly among the dining halls at Midlands and four other metro-area hospitals.

OneWorld Community Health Centers also recently launched a Saturday morning farmers market in the parking lot outside its clinic in south Omaha's historic Livestock Exchange Building.

Nationally, markets at hospitals aren't new. California-based Kaiser Permanente, the largest nonprofit health system in the country, started farmers markets in some of its hospital parking lots in 2003. It now has 30 hospital-based markets, mostly on the West Coast.

But the trend does appear to be spreading. A recent CNN report noted farmers markets popping up at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, and the Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn.

In Omaha, the small but growing markets promote — and offer expanded access to — the kind of “healthy eating” doctors and dietitians preach.

“We want to encourage our patients and the community as a whole to eat healthy, and one way we do that is by putting it all together in a farmers market that's mostly about fresh produce,” said OneWorld CEO Andrea Skolkin. “There isn't a farmers market in south Omaha, and some people don't have transportation to go downtown.”

Skolkin said her clinic, which serves an ethnically diverse group of underinsured and uninsured people, treats many health issues that are at least partly rooted in poor diet.

“We have a large number of diabetics at the clinic, maybe 5 to 10 percent of our patients. And probably 70 percent of the kids have tooth decay from not eating properly,” Skolkin said. “There is also a tendency of being overweight for children in the Latino community, so that's another reason to promote more healthy eating.”

Though the markets haven't been widely publicized yet, Alegent spokeswoman Jodi Hoatson said they're open to anyone, not just employees or those who happen to be at the hospital.

“If you can just eat better whole foods,” she said, “we know that's going to make a difference in your health.”

Terri Hill, director of food and nutrition at Alegent, said the idea bubbled up from the health system's food and nutrition staff last year and in discussions with the Iowa Food Policy Council about how to expand markets for locally raised food.

“We decided to do it as a way to get fresh produce for our associates and also as a way to give back,” Hill said. “We care about the carbon footprint. It's the right thing to do in the community and in the hospitals, and the food just tastes better.”

Food-curious staff and visitors at Bergan Mercy Medical Center this past Tuesday had to take an elevator downstairs to the dining hall to find the temporary market: a handful of local farmers behind green-cloth-covered tables that bore Nebraska- and Iowa-grown black walnuts, pecans, tomatoes, English cucumbers, turnips, radishes, beets, broccoli, eggs, cheese and sausage.

Hill said Alegent hopes to expand its local food emphasis by transitioning to locally grown salad bars and other fresh, local menu items at all its hospital dining centers this summer. Hill said the health system's 32 dietitians also will try to incorporate local foods into cooking classes for patients.

The food-centered health message got another boost in June, when Alegent sponsored local screenings of “Food Fight,” a documentary film about the evolution of the food industry in America and the Berkeley, Calif.-fueled return to eating local and less processed foods.

At a post-film discussion that touched on food and health policy, film director Chris Taylor told a sold-out Film Streams audience that hospitals and health care providers like Alegent have the leverage to seriously change what America eats.

“It's my feeling,” he said, “that large changes in the American food supply are going to be coming from health providers and HMOs.”

Skolkin said OneWorld is starting small, encouraging its patients and neighbors to grow food at home and sell their extras at the budding market. The clinic might even start passing out vegetable seeds to patients early next spring, “so they can grow food in their yards or on their apartment patios.”

Organizers of health-centered farmers markets stop short of saying that local food is more nutrient-rich than foods raised and shipped from afar. But they say it's generally fresher and more flavorful — and possibly just tasty enough to convert those who'd otherwise choose junk food.

“I don't know that it's more nutritious,” Hill said. “It's just a superior product. Hopefully we can get people to try more things.”

Skolkin agreed: “I think when we taste (local foods) as consumers, we think they taste better. And if that's going to get us to eat more fruits and vegetables, that's a good thing.”

Contact the writer:

444-1069, nichole.aksamit@owh.com

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