To think hospital food should be better?

[Tortycat]

Currently in hospital with poorly dc2. I cannot believe how bad the food is! There's posters everywhere about 5 a day etc, but the food is a sea of beige. Tonight dc2 (15 months) was offered chicken nuggets and chips. As I'm still bf i was offered food (cheese sandwich). No idea what parents are meant to eat o/w as i cant take him off the ward and the only other food for adults here is a snack machine with chocolates (and no change machine). Breakfast was white toast, lunch was sausage and chips/ mash, or macaroni cheese. Overboiled carrot was only veg available.

I know costs have to be kept down, but how can they not serve healthier options (cheap stuff like baked potatoes, lentil soup, salads etc)? Any long term patients must be constipated and scurvy ridden! Needless to say ds hasn't been tempted to eat anything since we came in except some raspberries dh brought in

[Shinesweetfreedom]

I bloody love hospital food me.Lister in Stevenage did a smashing selection.Even the vegi options were lovely.

[blackteasplease]

I agree that kids should have healthy option although it's also true that getting any food into them is doubtless a plus.

What I really can't understand is the not feeding the parents of small children who have to be there to care for their child. It's not optional for a parent to stay even if they wanted to go. They do all the actual caring these days with the shortage of nurses, the nurses are restricted to just giving out medicines in my local hospital.

If you are a single parent with no local support god knows how you are supposed to get food! Fine once your child is old enough to hear "I'm nipping out to the shop, stay in your bed for 30 mins" but with a mobile toddler or pre schooler that just isn't happening - they'd be quite distressed and the nurses haven't the time to watch them.

But a parent who is well and has slept and eaten is crucial to the child's recovery.

[EdinaMonsoon]

Currently in hospital & have been shocked at how shitty the food is & lack of water. On my first day, I was admitted at 4pm & not offered a drink until the following morning. DH brought bottled water in for me. I have to have a gluten-free diet & have been met with lots of shoulder-shrugging at mealtimes & told there is no GF option - despite ordering it . If DH had been unable to bring food in for me then I would have gone hungry. The few things I have been able to eat have been grey sludge & inedible.

[TonTonMacoute]

shorty and onlyona

That brings back bad memories too. I was offered no food until 12 hours after DS was born, and that was from one of the healthcare assistants, if I had waited for any of the nurses to notice god knows when I would have got anything.

[Jakeyboy1]

Putting the comments re the NHS is bankrupt/lucky to eat etc etc aside I think it's symptomatic of a much bigger issue in this country - food education. And if we got that right then it would also benefit the NHS by reducing dietary related illness (ok simplistic maybe but my point is the NHS should surely be setting an example?

The one thing that sticks in my mind from children's ward is my 9 month old being offered sugar by the TABLESPOON on cereal at breakfast! I mean come on have some fucking common sense!

[shorty6768]

When I had ds2 I wasn’t offered any food 😔 was starving too!
By contrast when I had my nose job privately, the hospital food was amazing. T-bone steak with dauphinois potatoes & vanilla Haagen Dazs 😍

[TonTonMacoute]

YANBU. The last hospital food I saw was when my FIL was there. He was served up the most revolting piece of fried fish I’ve ever seen.

Food is food, why is it cheaper to cook it so badly that it is inedible?

[Ollivander84]

Oh and a flapjack and extra orange juice and two mugs of tea
I had fasted for hours then my op was nearly 5hrs. They seemed astounded someone was hungry and so kept bringing me extra food
The nurse also made me hot chocolate with squirty cream at 3am when I couldn't sleep

[Ollivander84]

School dinner type here too. I was on neurosurgery ward and happily ate it all
This was my meal two hours post op
Butter pie, peas and gravy
Orange juice
Bread roll
Yoghurt
Jam roly poly and custard
Ice cream (my throat hurt so they brought me some!)

[onlyonaTuesday]

When I had Dd2 20 years ago. I wasn’t allowed breakfast as I had missed the time slot 🤔 I had been in labour for 2 days.
Then when I ordered a cheese sandwich for tea they brought some brown glop instead.
In the end I got my df to go to KFC and get some buckets of chicken.
Everyone on the ward ate well that night

[dahliaaa]

I was in hospital recently and the food was inedible. Really really awful. I was only in for one night so it didn't matter for me but there was an older woman on the ward who had already been in for two weeks and was going to have to stay longer. She said the food was really getting to her and she was finding it really difficult to eat it. It can't possibly have been helping her recovery.

[nocoolnamesleft]

One kids ward I worked on tried bringing in healthy options. Day after day they went in the bin, as they were rejected. Couldn't afford to keeo throwing food away. So back to beige crap. Which means that most of them will eat something. There's still veg come up with it. Hardly ever gets eaten.

[GetOutOfMYGarden]

The absolute best hospital food I've ever had (and I've worked in multiple hospitals) was at an NHS hospital - Alder Hey Childrens Hospital. It's cheap, it's absolutely delicious, and it's healthy - eg. £1 for some of the loveliest soup I've ever had and a bread roll. Because it's all made on site, with chefs working there to cater to the children's nutritional needs.

There needs to be a study into how exactly they've managed to do it yet at other hospitals I've been in I paid through the nose for awful food from the canteen and quickly learned that the costa/subway on site was absolutely my best bet.

[EvilDoctorBallerinaRoastDuck]

It wasn't a courtesy meal, she's bfing.

[HermioneKipper]

I actually quite liked the hospital food when I was in having DD - very school dinners. Not particularly nutritious though, veg was overcooked. Lots of stodge and sugary puddings - lemon sponge and custard, spotted dick, jam sponge etc DH was jealous as the canteen food was much worse! What annoyed me was that there was a collection box on the ward next to the tea trolley and we put in £50 as we were there a week and DH had lots of tea, biscuits and toast at breakfast and the midwives told us we were the first people to donate in a long time. I thought that was v sad

[PonderLand]

I used to serve the food and we were not allowed to temperature probe halal meals. The only other food item on the standard menu that was halal was chicken nuggets on the kids ward. Perhaps it was just our trust which operated that rule, but there was not any other halal meat but what was clearly labelled on the food packaging.

[smurfblue]

At my local hospital the toast comes pre toasted and is just warmed up again.

Looks and tastes like the slice of bread dishcloths my gran used to use.

[PonderLand]

@43percentburnt
All of that sounds really good, however does that mean that ff mothers on the maternity suite were not fed? And also is it okay to give bf mothers left overs from other wards without any choice? What happens if there isn't enough left over food? I don't think that's anything to be positive about.

Women who have given birth are the patients and should be given menus and have choice, not scraps. And that is if they are breastfeeding or formula feeding.

[Splinterz]

A pp suggesting the curry off the halal menu, keep in mind that hot halal food items don't get the temperature checked and they are their for patients who have different dietary requirements to you.

All meat in all hospitals (and schools) is halal, has been for years. Some of it is published as halal to fit the political agenda - that being that people would go dipshit if they knew their school/dinner was halal regardless of faith. (But that's a whole different debate)

All our local hospitals offer a halal menu and an ethnic menu of heavily spiced foods because we have a large African population. Where do you get the idea halal meals are not temperature checked?

[43percentburnt]

I stayed at three different hospitals within one month the difference between food was incredible. The worst served no veg with some meals. Macaroni cheese and chips was one meal, no veg available. The canteen wasn’t any better and no shop for miles. It had posters all over about nutrition.

Another had salads, fruit, jacket potato’s etc. You could easily eat 7 a day. You also ordered portion size - no doubt reduces waste. They also put left over food (when patients had ordered but been discharged) into the maternity department for breastfeeding mothers. They also had weetabix and biscuits available for breastfeeding mothers for whenever they were hungry.

[Splinterz]

Op - you aren't even the patient - you got a courtesy meal - frankly if your DH is visiting he can get your meals for you. This is one example of where the profligate waste in the NHS is, giving meals to non patients.

[PonderLand]

I think it's shocking that they don't provide salad or jacket potatoes with different fillings etc. It's not a case of too much waste as a pp suggested as wards should only be ordering in what patients have asked for.

On the children's ward I worked on we had hot food like what you pictured at lunch and jacket potatoes/salads/quiches/beans or spaghetti on toast for tea. It's important to remember that most people who stay in hospital usually are in and out within a few days, all the hospitals I've worked in had a 4 week rotation of all lunch and evening meal menus so what you see in your stay is a small snippet of what is on offer. Selection isn't great but most people find something they like from my experience.

A pp suggesting the curry off the halal menu, keep in mind that hot halal food items don't get the temperature checked and they are their for patients who have different dietary requirements to you.

[Davros]

Oh and top tip, ask for cheese and biscuits, always available at the local

[Davros]

My local hospital had the food overhauled by James Martin and it’s fine if a bit repetitive in terms of the style of dishes. I was in there 20 years ago and it was vile but now the soup is tasty, there’s good stew type food, good salads, sandwiches etc. What used to be the staff canteen, which is now also open to the public, is excellent. Some of the staff didn’t know what Marmite was though

[Ttbb]

My local hospital reccomend tinned peaches for diabetics