“Good morning, Niklas! Here you can see our new purple curry sauce, which is available today with the plant-based menu.” Armin Storm, head of the kitchen at the Schwarzwald-Baar Clinic, stirs a large metal container.
His chefs are about to mix the dough for patties: white beans, onions, gluten-free oat flakes, sunflower seeds, turmeric, curry and a spice mixture. There will be rice mixed with broccoli and the sauce made from coconut milk, water, curry powder and beetroot juice.
Orientation on the “Planetary Health Diet”
The dish corresponds to the “Planetary Health Diet” (external link). This is a plant-based nutritional concept that, according to findings from a group of 37 researchers from 16 countries, can protect the health of people and the planet alike. Vegetables, legumes, fruit, whole grains, nuts and high-quality vegetable oils form the basis. But chef Armin Storm doesn’t just have health in mind: “We’re also much better off in terms of taste than if you work with an industrial product.”
There are reservations in the clinics
Eating healthy in the hospital: A group of doctors worked for a year to set up a pilot project and find hospitals that would take part: “There is a great fear of allowing such changes to take place. There is a fear of bad feedback, there is Cost pressure,” says doctor Niklas Oppenrieder from Aschaffenburg.
It has been six and a half years since Niklas Oppenrieder and a few like-minded people founded the medical society “Physicians Association for Nutrition” (PAN) in Munich. Because the topic of nutrition rarely appeared in medical training and practice and they realized “how powerful nutrition is to prevent disease, to treat disease.” For example, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure or rheumatoid arthritis.
PAN has now grown into an international medical network. There are branches in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Israel, Brazil, India, South Africa and the USA.
Chance for reform of hospital catering
Am Healthy Hospital Food (external link) Three clinics from Baden-Württemberg and one from Switzerland are currently taking part in the project. Perhaps the University Hospital of Würzburg will be added in 2025, says Evelyn Medawar, who coordinates the project at PAN.
Doctor Niklas Oppenrieder sees great opportunities in the project: “We have over a million employees in hospitals in Germany alone. We have over 27 million inpatients every year. That means: That’s an incredible amount of food that’s there every day , go out every week, every month, every year.”
A new dish: two months of preparation
Clinic kitchen manager Armin Storm approached the doctors’ organization himself. “The challenge for us in the commercial kitchen is, of course, that we have to have everything ready at the same time at a certain point. So we’re at 1,200, 1,400 lunches that we make every day.”
Adding the new dish to the menu took Storm’s team two months of preparation. How can the recipe be adapted to the production volume? Where do the ingredients come from in usable packaging sizes? And what is put into which containers and when so that all the food is ready at the same time?
Motivated chefs find new ways
The chefs crush the beans for the patty by hand. “When I run it through the machine, I end up with a pulp, a puree. It’s more time-consuming, but we can make it a day in advance or two days in advance and then have the product ready. And then we can make a large batch.” Armin Storm is a doer. He wants to, and therefore he can. But PAN also makes the change easier for less motivated chefs. The doctors’ organization creates needs analyses, prescriptions and training materials for the clinics. She trains staff, collects feedback and evaluates the process.
Niklas Oppenrieder’s conclusion after the visit to Villingen-Schwenningen: He is happy about the high level of motivation in the kitchen, but he is also a bit disappointed about the rather low demand for the bean patty. Armin Storm and he agree: We also have to tell people that they have something particularly good and healthy on their plate! The doctor takes it as an incentive: “I am confident that we can improve this even further with appropriate communication.”
