The Volunteers of Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara are pleased
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What is this all about?
Since our first Kaiser Permanente farmers' market opened at the Oakland Medical Center in May, 2003, over 35 more have begun at Kaiser Permanente facilities in six states and the District of Columbia. The latest market opened due to KP leadership is in Watts in South Central L.A. Up here in the Bay Area, there are 135 markets in nine counties. Kaiser Permanente hosts 10% of them. The Oakland KP market is one of only five all organic markets.
In August 2006, Kaiser Permanente began sourcing some of the fruits and vegetables used in the 6000 meals per day fed to inpatients from small family farmers who farm "sustainably" -- in ways that are good for the earth. This year we hope to have 60 tons of their food enjoyed by our patients.
The 1000 vending machines in our facilities now have "Healthy Picks" available as do our cafeterias.
Individual boxes or bags of fresh fruits and vegetables are being delivered to some KP facilities in Northern California and Colorado.
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And stay tuned --- there are other programs in the works to expand the availability of healthy fresh food for more people. Our program's focus on getting produce to the people isn't going to stop. I'm excited that Kaiser Permanente is bringing you this website. Don't worry -- it's not going to have reality clips of my day filmed by a videocam on my head. I plan to offer the same commentary and recipes of the week that have been e-mailed each week to almost 11,000 people. As this site is accessed through the Web, KP employees will now be able to have the recipes on their home computers if they wish. The site, of course, will be available to anyone who wants information about simple, healthy, and tasty things to cook featuring what's fresh at the farmers' market. A wonderful feature of the site I hope you find useful is the "search" function. Over time we will enter all the recipes from my archives back to 2003. It will be easy to find blue cheese turkey burgers, arugula salad, or watermelon-sesame salsa for salmon. I look forward to receiving yourcomments and ideas and will write about the themes that may be of interest to a wider audience. So, welcome to my website. Here's to your good health through good food.
Dr. Preston J. Maring |
