Hospital puts vegetarian meals on the menu

Melinda Hewitt, Contributor, Jakarta

In our meat-focused world, it was a brave step to take.

In 1998, Medika Griya Hospital (RSMG) in Sunter, North Jakarta, became the first hospital in Jakarta to embrace a vegetarian diet, both for its patients and staff, in an effort to incorporate holistic health principles in the treatment of disease.

Hospital founder and president of the Indonesian Vegetarian Association (KVMI) Bambang Sumantri, sees it as his dharma to promote vegetarianism. A picture of radiant health with a complexion that would be the envy of most women, Bambang also shuns alcohol and cigarettes.

Six years ago, he and his family became vegetarian and he set out to introduce others to a meatless lifestyle. Employees at his Nirwana Sunter Asri real estate office, 300 hospital staff and his 15 household staff are provided free vegetarian meals.

At the hospital, not only patients are encouraged to go vegetarian; doctors, nurses and all non-medical staff, including security guards, are provided two free vegetarian meals per shift. In this way, Bambang reasons, two-thirds of their diet is vegetarian, and "the rest is up to them".

"Although our doctors treated patients with a lot of love, I realized that an incorrect diet could become a source of illness. 'You are what you eat.' ... So, I eliminated meat. Medika Griya became a vegetarian hospital where doctors not only treat the effects of illness but remove the cause itself," Bambang said.

He acknowledged the switch to vegetarianism at the hospital, established in 1991, was a process they all went through together. The move took six months -- three months training through seminars and discussions, and then a three-month trial period before introducing it to the patients.

Some people were resistant to giving up their traditional staples.

"Before I introduced a vegetarian diet to the patients, I started with the staff and doctors first, in particular the heads of each section. Initially I was bombarded with tough questions by my medical staff, but later I found the doctors more receptive to the idea than the layman."

Hospital caterer Anna Retno Widiasih explained that the hospital offers three choices of menu for lunch and dinner. An example of two typical lunch menus is spinach and sweetcorn soup, sauteed bean sprouts and carrots and spicy gluten stewed in coconut milk, followed by fruit, or carrot and vermicelli soup) sauteed mushroom, snow peas and carrot, tofu in vegetarian oyster sauce, soya balls, Bali-spiced tempeh and fruit.

Helda Mailoa, a nutritionist of 12 years and a consultant dietician at the hospital, says that a vegetarian diet is strongly endorsed by the American Cancer Association, which recommends four steps for cancer prevention: reduce saturated fat intake by 30 percent; increase fiber content in diet; maintain an ideal body weight and eat lots of fruit and vegetables.

Likewise, she said, the American Heart Association and the European Arteriosclerosis Society recommended in 1988 the following to reduce the risk of cardiac arrest: avoid animal fat; avoid snacking between meals; eat lots of fruit and vegetables and quit smoking.

Helda says she spends about 10 hours a day talking and never tires of counseling people on a healthy diet. A strong believer that most degenerative diseases can be controlled through the right diet, Helda can quote many cases to support her conviction.

She tells of a patient who was alarmed by the results of a recent blood test that revealed that he had a triglyceride count of over 700. He had taken medication to reduce the triglyceride count, with little success.

Helda recommended he changed his lifestyle. Along with a vegetarian diet she recommended he avoid fried food, tea and coffee, took adequate rest, did light exercise such as walking and tried to be more patient and calm. In two weeks his triglyceride count dropped to 178 and remained at that level.

Former director of RSMG and secretary of the Organization for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (PKKAI), Dr. Petrus Stefanus Purwono, elaborated on the process of digestion.

"The advantage of a vegetarian diet is that we reduce saturated fat intake and the high fiber content of vegetables helps the contractions of our digestive tract as a whole and increases absorption. Bowel movements are made easier and are more frequent because the fiber stimulates the contractions of the digestive tract.

In the colon (large intestine) we have both good or useful bacteria such as lactobacillus bifidus and harmful bacteria such as E. Coli and staphylococcus aureus. The useful and harmful bacteria coexist in balance within our colon.

However, if we do not eat enough fiber the undigested food accumulates in the colon, resulting in higher acidity in our colon. This acidity destroys the good bacteria tipping the balance in favor of the harmful bacteria.

These bacteria produce toxic gases that can cause malignancy in cells. To avoid this, undigested food should be eliminated quickly from the body and this can be achieved with a high fiber diet. This is the great advantage of a vegetarian diet."

Dr. Hendry Wijaya, a doctor in the emergency department at RSMG, explained human physiology vis-a-vis carnivores and herbivores that eat only fruit or grass.

"Humans have a similar physiology to that of a fruit or grass eater.

"The human intestine is 12 times the length of the body, as in fruit eaters such as apes. Grass eaters such as cows, sheep and goats have an intestine 10 times the length of the body.

"On the other hand, the intestine of a carnivore is only three times the length of its body. Why? So the meat can be eliminated from the body quickly before it putrefies. Likewise carnivores, to enable them to digest meat, have high acidity in the stomach, with a concentration of hydrochloric acid 20 times that of the stomach of human beings."

On a more alarming note, Hendry warned that eating food high in animal fat stimulates the gall bladder to produce acid, which in turn reacts with an intestinal bacteria clostridium, to form methylcholanthrene, a known carcinogen.

To respond to frequently asked questions of patients on vegetarianism, the hospital has produced a book titled: A Guide to a Life of Health and Happiness, which is given free of charge to patients.

The hospital hopes to shift its focus to preventative treatment rather than the treatment of disease. "We would be happy to see other hospitals following suit," said Bambang.