Hospital puts vegetarian meals on the menu

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.