Thursday, November 25, 2010

"Making a difference one pizza at a time"


That's the title of Heart and Stroke Foundation Dietitian Samara Foisy's blog post on why she's thrilled to have had the opportunity to work with Pizzaville in bringing them Health Check'ed menu items (something I blogged about yesterday).

Well, a friend of mine (who'd prefer to remain anonymous) had a gander at her blog post and sent me his creative edit of it.

Words in parentheses are hers, while the bold words are his modifications.

I think it rather brilliantly illuminates the problem with Samara's and the Heart and Stroke Foundation's logic.

Making a difference one (pizza) needle at a time

As a (dietitian) police officer I sometimes get asked why I have decided to work with (restaurants) drug dealers to help them offer (healthier) safer items (on their menus) to their customers. Especially (pizza restaurants) heroin addicts. Shouldn’t I just be telling people not to (eat pizza) use heroin? And shouldn’t I just be telling people to (cook) go to their doctors (from scratch) for their drugs and (eat) use all of their (meals) drugs at home?

In fact I do this. I encourage people to plan and shop for (meals) drugs, and (prepare them) take them as directed at home. This is something almost all of us could, and should, do more of. But the reality is Canadians (eat out) use drugs. A lot. (About one of every ten meals we eat comes from a restaurant. According to Stats Can one in four Canadians consume an item from a fast food restaurant daily.) And what are we choosing? About (40%) 80% of the time (either a sandwich, hamburger, hot dog or pizza) alcohol, but 25% of the time it’s prescription drugs and 15% of the time it’s marijuana; in 5% to 14% of cases it’s heroin. (Pizza) Heroin is not a surprising choice. It is (delicious) cheap and readily available. There are (7500 pizza restaurant operators) thousands of drug dealers in Canada and thousands of (restaurants) them include (pizza) heroin on their menus. In 2002 alone there were (more than 351 million pizza transactions in Canadian restaurants) nearly 100,000 arrests in Canada for drug-related offenses. Thatsa lotta (pizza) drugs.

So along with encouraging Canadians to (cook) get drugs primarily from their doctors as often as they can, and trying to make a difference this way, I also want to be practical. A big part of working in health promotion is meeting people where they are. If I can help people make (healthy eating) better drug choices when they are (eating out) abusing drugs, then I have definitely made a difference. By working with (restaurants) drug dealers to get some healthier items on their menus and identifying these healthier items for customers I have the opportunity to help a lot of people. And as a (dietitian) police officer, this is an opportunity I don’t want to miss.