Hospitals are places where wellness and health are supposed to be beneficial to promote a longer and healthier life. When you walk into a hospital you expect to see healthy places to eat and if not that then a cafeteria with low sodium foods.

If you put hospitals and fast food restaurants together it is kind of a contradiction, promoting health yet offering killer foods; it sends mixed messages.

Kim Painter from USA Today wrote that nearly two dozen hospitals that host McDonald’s restaurants received a letter from an advocacy group asking them to evict their fast-food tenants and to stop fostering a food environment that promotes harm, not health.

Some people may believe hospitals that have McDonald’s restaurants are just doing business, but I feel there is a time and a place for everything and McDonald’s restaurants in hospitals are certainly not the place.

America is supposed to try to improve health in communities, not higher cholesterol and increase diabetes, heart attacks and obesity. 

Obesity is already becoming America’s most common cause of death. According to the Trust for America’s Health obesity rates have doubled from 15 to 30 percent in adults, while children obesity rates have more than tripled. Do you really think a McDonald’s in hospitals is a smart move?

The campaign director for Corporate Accountability International, Sara Deon said, “We hear from physicians saying kids come in for their diabetic check-ups and they hear their parents saying ‘If you are well behaved, we’ll take you for a treat at McDonald’s down the hall.” Instead of telling children “We will go to McDonald’s if you behave,” how about you take them for yogurt, they will probably think it is ice cream?

Fast food will only increase your risk of depression, obesity or an addiction to junk food. Such foods will not aid in recovery or positively impact overall health. 

Aside from a Big Mac with medium fries that probably contains more sodium than you should have from an entire day of eating, McDonald’s has revamped its menu to offer partially healthy foods as well. It has added salads, fruits and walnuts, apple slices, fruit and maple oatmeal, chicken sandwiches and even fried or grilled chicken wraps.

With all of those “healthy choices” listed, people might consider leaving that McDonald’s in the hospital but only if it was serving specifically healthy choices.

When I really think about it, whether there is a McDonald’s inside of the hospital or not, people are going to eat whatever they want. A person could easily leave the hospital and head straight to McDonald’s for something to eat.

When it is all said and done people are going to do what they want and eat how they feel. McDonald’s has a right to sell food wherever they choose. People have the right to eat it, but preferably, not in a place whose vital purpose is, or ought to be, the promotion of health.

Veronica Jones is a sophomore strategic communication major from Dallas.