
San Francisco to reduce meat and dairy served in hospitals and jails
The City Board of Supervisors passed this vote last week stating: “Jails must reduce purchases of animal products by 50 percent in 2024, and public hospitals, including Zuckerberg General and Laguna Honda, must reduce animal product purchases by 15 percent in 2023," according to San Francisco Weekly.
There is a growing body of scientific evidence that eating less meat and dairy reduces the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and other harmful health conditions. Yet, hospital food served to patients routinely still contains these products, and doctors are finally beginning to push back. One such doctor, Saray Stancic, MD, made a documentary about the urgency to switch hospital food to plant-based for the health of patients and doctors alike, Code Blue, which chronicles her struggle to get hospitals to get rid of fast food in the offerings to visitors and meat and dairy from patients' trays.
“People will look back in 20 years and say, ‘Wow, I can’t believe that we were eating all this meat,” says Sandra Lee Fewer, who is a member of the SF Board of Supervisors.