Golden Arches in Hospitals Are Making Some See Red

McDonald’s is opening restaurants in hospitals in what one doctor suggests is an invitation to a Big Mac heart attack. But a hospital spokesman argues that the food “hasn’t killed anyone yet.”

The fast food chain has opened eight such restaurants nationwide. One more is under construction at Dayton Children’s Hospital in Ohio and four are under contract, said Steven Roth, McDonald’s manager of hospital development.

Dr. Michael Goldblatt, McDonald’s staff nutritionist, said the restaurants supplement hospitals’ regular food services and are aimed at staff and visitors, not patients.

“Yeah, the sodium is high in some of the food, but they also have salads and salt-free french fries. It’s not going to kill you. It hasn’t killed anyone yet,” said John Head, spokesman at Denver General Hospital, where a McDonald’s opened last month.

McDonald’s spokesman John Onoda said the hospital restaurants are no different from the chain’s setups in museums, airports and train stations. Burger King and Wendy’s also have opened restaurants in hospitals.

“McDonald’s will open up where people go, where people are,” he said Monday in an interview at the chain’s headquarters in Oak Brook, a Chicago suburb.

“The whole idea is ridiculous,” said Dr. Sidney Wolfe of the Public Citizen Health Research Group, a Washington-based consumer advocacy group.

“What better way to create new patients than to sell food which significantly increases the risk of coronary artery disease and heart attacks?” he wrote in a group newsletter in an article headlined “Big Mac (Heart) Attack.”

Food Guidelines

“It is not unlike, in my view, the idea of hospitals selling cigarettes,” Wolfe said Monday.

The American Hospital Assn. and the American Medical Assn. declined comment. A spokesman for American Heart Assn. took issue with the practice.

“We feel hospitals should provide leadership in health care,” said spokesman Howard Lewis. “They’re not giving the leadership with this move to McDonald’s because of the image of McDonald’s and other fast food companies--the image of food that is high in cholesterol, high in fat and high in salt, which are three areas we’re very concerned about.”

The heart association’s guidelines urge people to limit intake of fats, especially saturated fats, sodium and cholesterol.

In announcing those guidelines in 1986, Dr. W. Virgil Brown, a former chairman of the committee that drafted them, said: “Hamburgers are far and away the No. 1 cholesterol problem in the country.”

“As far as quality goes, McDonald’s uses the finest-quality ingredients,” Goldblatt said. “Our food is really no different than the kind of food you consume at home.

“Our hamburgers contain no more than 22.5% fat. . . . The restaurants offer food from the four food groups, even with the addition of salads. It’s possible to get a very light nutritious meal as well.”