Would you like a burger with your by-pass? https://www.forksoverknives.com/fries-with-your-bypass-hospital-food/

As we all know, patients staying at hospitals for an extended period are served meals as part of their care. For many years hospitals regularly served patients a standard "default" meal or gave them a limited number of choices from a menu. The default meal was almost always a typical, unhealthy, animal-based diet: Breakfast often includes bacon, ham, sausage, eggs. Lunch and dinner were generally meat-based, too. Vegan options were rare, when there even were options. This is changing at many hospitals, but it continues to remain a problem at many others.

A recent article posted on line by Forks Over Knives (https://www.forksoverknives.com/fries-with-your-bypass-hospital-food/ points out that the standard meals served in many hospitals to patients with serious conditions are often the very foods that contributed to those conditions. Animal products are high in cholesterol and are acknowledged by experts as a major cause of heart disease. There is quite an incongruity between the attitude of many hospitals towards smoking and their attitudes towards consumption of animal products. Both can cause serious ailments, including cancer and heart disease, yet while smoking is strongly discouraged by the medical profession, the eating of animal products is condoned -- and even reinforced by the food that is served in many hospitals. 

We, the undersigned, believe health care professionals should be leading the way in influencing the general public to examine its dietary habits and move away from unhealthy, uncompassionate and environmentally unsound diets. We ask that hospitals implement vegan diets for all in-patients, and educate them on the health reasons for such diets.