Commissioner of Aging Edwin Mendez-Santiago told skeptical lawmakers yesterday the frozen meals the city is considering for seniors aren’t the average TV dinner.
“It’s not the same as when we take our own leftovers and stick it in the freezer,” the commissioner said.
“Within seconds of when the food is cooked, it’s immediately flash frozen so that when it is reheated, it’s as if it were as fresh as coming off the stove,” Santiago-Mendez testified in the City Council yesterday.
“When you go to your local supermarket to get something that might look green and fresh, that might have been flash frozen to retain its nutritional value while it was transported,” he added, saying the flash technology is used by reputable nonprofits such as God’s Love We Deliver.
After years of testing the program in The Bronx, the Bloomberg administration wants to give seniors the choice of either getting one hot meal daily or flash-frozen meals delivered twice a week.
A typical menu for the 17,000 lunches now served to seniors every day consists of appetizers, a main dish, fruits, vegetables and dessert.
Right now, officials said the myriad of contracts for senior meals cost between $2.60 to $26.04 per meal, but fewer contracts with the flash-frozen option would average $6.88 a meal.
That change would lead to fewer contracts and the ability to handle more specific requests, such as catering to diabetics, and being more culturally sensitive and offering more choices to seniors.
Currently, seniors only have two choices; kosher or regular.
Helen Foster (D-Bronx) wondered about the sodium content of the meals because she heard the food was a tad salty and asked, “Have you tasted the food yourself? I want to make sure we’re not offering something we haven’t tasted ourselves.”
Mendez-Santiago said his office and service providers had conducted numerous taste tests. “We even had Mayor Bloomberg do a taste test with some of the members of the bullpen [his office staff], and generally, across the board, people were very satisfied with the meals.”
He stressed that no senior would be forced to get the frozen meal – it would be a choice for those who would prefer not to wait for daily deliveries that might conflict with doctor’s appointments or other commitments.
Many lawmakers are concerned that the administration’s wholesale revamp of senior centers and senior meals might be moving too quickly. Lawmakers are also reluctant to sign off on a plan that takes away the daily human contact some homebound seniors have with those who deliver the food.
“Was there an outpouring of seniors who wrote the Department for the Aging, who wrote the mayor and said, ‘Listen the current system isn’t really working for me’ ” asked Melinda Katz (D-Queens).
Maria del Carmen Arroyo (D-Bronx), the chair of the committee. “You guys have a year and change left in this administration. You are locking in contracts for six months. What’s the rush?
“This is a lot to bite off. I’m not confident that [the Department for the Aging] is going to be able to chew this and digest it in a year and 10 months. Whoever comes in after is going to deal with the fallout. It takes six months to a year to understand if you were successful,” she added.
City officials are taking comments on their revamp proposal from now until March 14 at conceptpaper@aging.nyc.gov.