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

It's crazy. Two of the things that really help a sick body to heal are good food and sleep - both things that are pretty much impossible to obtain in hospital.

Guavaf1sh, have a 'don't be so ridiculous' for your troubles. Hospitals are supposed to provide food that is nutritious and tempting for their patients.
OP, IME, hospitals vary wildly in the food they give patients, never mind their carers.
In some hospitals, food is great, brought in to the ward and dished up individually, and is hot, well-presented and good. In others, not so much - not far off slop.
It comes down to individual trusts, the local authority, and who the catering is contracted to.

I remember James Martin doing a series about hospital food and he had some brilliant ideas about cheap healthy food. I think the NHS is just too corporate and centralised to implement them.

Its

Sorry hit post by mistake!

It's less a budget issue and more mismanagement. Using crappy and expensive catering firms who are just reheating stuff rather than cooking on the premises.

I was visiting a friend recently and the food she was served was awful. They also kept missing out their hot drinks and water (not great in a ward of bedbound patients). That smacks more of lack of care than lack of budget imo.

Read this article about hospital food in Japan. Someone commented that he'd like to give birth in Japan, and he's a 60 year old man!
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/09/woman-shares-photos-amazing-hospital-food-served-japan/

YABU - it's not a restaurant

I think most hospital patients realise that but having some kind of decent food when you're in hospital shouldn't be too much to ask. When I was in recently the food was absolutely appaling. Even if it was something that half appealed the actual meal when it arrived was awful when it arrived. I lived mostly on sandwiches etc that my mum brought in for me

My father was in two different hospitals in the last year. One served good food & everyone got a cup of delicious home made soup (lentil etc) to start with. The other served the worse food you have ever seen. My father could barely swallow & they served up a dry reheated cheese omelette and peas every day. It was awful.

The budget is £1.78 per person, per day and that includes all food and drink. It's no wonder the food is shocking...

Agree with you. I feel it is a massive missed opportunity to teach people about nutrition and help them start as they mean to go on.

I'm vegan, so last time I was in, my family brought me food. Fortunately.
They didn't even have plant-based milk alternatives.

The vending machines are full of unhealthy crap too.

It’s such a shame, 7 years ago I had surgery in s hospital which made its own food in house. It was edible enough and things like soup were like what my gran would make.

Conversely, I then spent the best part of a year in an oncology hospital where I preferred to eat things like calshakes/high cal drinks to the food because it was dire. It was made next door in the main hospital and wheeled through in these wee dalek things. The cancer bit had a special menu to try to help us eat (baked potatoes, soup etc) but it was disgusting. The worst bit was when you lost your sense of taste - texture becomes real important - it was all just mush.

The one and only time i have been in hospital one night the food was so bad i couldn’t eat it. ‘Matron’ came to berate me for not eating, took one look at the food and said she didn’t blame me and went and fetched me some tea and biccies.

I can confirm that food in Swiss hospitals is delicious - but sometimes I just wanted something simple!

To the PP who asked how the Swiss system is funded - health insurance is compulsory. We have international insurance at around £6,000 a year each (we are early 50s, it goes up a little every year). My friend in her 60s is in the local system and pays over £7,000 a year. A night’s stay cost my insurance company about £700, just for the room and nursing care. If you have surgery there are theatre costs on top, plus big fees for the surgeon and anaesthetist (and everything itemised down to the last glove and dressing ). So it’s expensive, but waiting lists are short and I have got my money’s worth over the years, not sure if that’s a good thing or not!

Oh sorry it was you OP who asked about Swiss funding.

Btw a friend in hospital in the U.K. ordered a jacket potato for dinner, which was served with a side order of... boiled potatoes

My local hospital reccomend tinned peaches for diabetics

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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
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.

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.

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.

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