Close, but Missed the Mark...

Ugh...

Each morning I eat my breakfast in the hospital cafeteria, and today was no exception. I got my boiled egg, milk, and cereal that I top with ground flax seeds (I keep a baggy of ground flax in my purse - just one of the interesting items I keep in there) and went to sit down. Upon setting my tray down at a table I looked up to see a banner advertising "Healthy Workplace Month" and not 10 feet away was remnants of massive sheet cake (offering slabs of both chocolate and white cake) that had been put out the day before. My mind chose to block out the safe food handling issues related to leaving this cake out all night and focus on the fact that a healthy workplace, to whomever decided to include such a massive cake, did not include healthy eating. Perhaps the organizers thought that the healthy lunch specials served in the cafeteria each day this week would "cover it", even though for dinner the cafeteria still offers high fat, high sugar, and deep-fried fare. My disappointment lies not only in the fact that a cake was present, but also in that the organizers probably didn't even think of not having a cake. In my 6.5 weeks working in Public Health, I've learned that people are extremely attached to cakes and that any sort of celebration requires and is expected to have one.

 

Battling the unfortunate mind-set of the necessity of having cake is something that I'm currently trying to do, along with the Public Health Nutritionists, through tackling the NS School Food and Nutrition Policy. Fundraisers are common-place for schools to hold and one of the most popular and successful fundraisers, as reported by principals and parents, is a cakewalk. For those of whom are unfamiliar with what a cakewalk entails, it is essentially a game similar to musical chairs. Music is played and people walk around on squares with numbers on them. Music stops and if whichever number you're standing on gets called by the announcer, you win that cake. Seems like fun, however inappropriate especially considering all fund-raising activities by schools must abide by the School Food and Nutrition Policy (SFNP) Guidelines: all foods sold for fundraising purposes must be of "maximum" nutritional value. The SFNP classifies foods in three categories according to nutritional content guidelines: maximum, moderate, and minimum. Cake is in the minimum category and can only be served on special occasions such as Valentine's Day. Cakewalks were brought up at a Principal's meeting I was attending (Principal's from every school in the Tri-Counties were there) and the negative and borderline violent uproar that we received when it was mentioned that these were no longer to be accepted in the Tri-County made me speechless!  This came even after presenting every person in there a page full (front and back) of acceptable fundraising ideas. It all boils down to people's readiness to change: despite that the principals are all educated professionals and that they had in front of them resources to help them with changes to better follow the SFNP (including the person representing Public Health standing before them), they were not ready to even hear about the need for change. This is going to make our job of reinforcing the policy that much trickier.

Perhaps education in the form of an email informing the SWNDHA Workplace Wellness Committee of their faux-pas would allow for change for next year - this is definitely something I'm willing to find out. But as far as this year's Workplace Wellness Month goes... at least they tried.