Weil calls for ban on hospital fast food

Andrew Weil, the director of the integrative medicine program at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, has called for the expulsion of fast food restaurants from hospitals in a NY Times Op-Ed piece:

Expelling fast food from hospitals is an obvious step to better health, but suggest it and you run into the same tangle of inertia and apathy that has kept hospitals from serving patients appetizing and wholesome food — and has instead allowed large food service corporations to put profit ahead of quality. I hold my profession responsible for much of the apathy.

Weil says that according to a study done four years ago 4 out of 10 had fast food restaurants on their premises and that by now that number must have gone up. He adds:

We are constantly told to cut back on fat and sugar, but to my mind the greater problem is the processed food that, over the past 50 years, has increasingly displaced whole, natural food in the American diet. The proliferation of fast food is a glaring example of that change.