That old people deserve nice food.

[sweethope]

This photo was took by a relative of someone in a care home for the elderly of a meal given today.. Aibu to say old people much better than that.

What gets me is the assumption that old people eat stodge and have always done so. Often Nursing home menus will have egg and chips, pie and mash and things like that as meals. My idea of hell. My parents and PIL are in their 80's. One lot would, indeed, eat that sort of food and the other would be more likely to eat a more modern, international cuisine.

I worked in a Nursing home once where one lady had her family bring in fresh prawns each time they visited as she was so sick of the stodge.

Another one who needs to know more before judging. Those chips look lovely, hate soggy or undercooked chips.

Maybe that's what the person asked for? Do they choose from a menu? Maybe one of the options was ham salad and they asked for chips instead?

You need to know more about what food is on offer and what the person has eaten for other meals before making a big deal about this.
They might have had fruit and veg at other meals.

And what if they don't want to eat healthy food? Many people don't enjoy vegetables and they might have thought 'fuck it, I'm old, I'm going to eat what I want, makes little difference at my time of life anyway'.

I know it doesn't look like much food, but inactive older people often have very small appetites.

Content aside, the meal should be better presented.

It must vary by area, but when I've been in hospital a few times in the last couple of years, I've been very impressed by the choice and quality of the food.

My elderly father was in for several weeks earlier this year, and we were quite amused that when he came home, he had got into the habit of taking sugar in his tea, after eighty-odd years of being powered by the unsweetened version. "Why now?", asked my mum. "It just tastes nicer."

Fair enough .

that needs a fried egg, ham eggs and chips is a meal many elderly like, perhaps this particular person didnt like eggs.
however the chips look rubbish, old and hard.
why was the photo taken? who took it to plaster it over facebook?

I hope everyone reads buswankeress's comment, and I'll repeat some of it here in case they don't:

... I think many people are missing the bigger picture as they do with anything to do with care homes. They're run as a business, to make a profit, and some are more bothered about profit than anything else. They take in a fortune in fees, most staff are min wage with no benefit package. And in any business to make profit, you streamline costs, and that includes food.

Trying to get everybody indignant over a photo of food is counterproductive. It's focussing on a detail that is irrelevant in many cases. As other posters have pointed out, what looks like horrible food to you is sometimes exactly what the client wants. As a carer, I've prepared plenty of foul muck such as boiled frankfurters in Tesco carbonara sauce served on spaghetti, because that's what the client knows, likes and asks for. Often families will say they want healthy food for their elderly relative, but said relative has very different ideas.

It's shit isn't it how some places treat people? As someone else said, if they served that in prison there would be a riot and idiots outside the jail would be protesting on behalf of the prisoners. No one cares about the elderly.

My dad works in many care homes, and his experiences have made me dread getting old.

My DSIL is a care home manager, can't remember the exact figure but she has less than £1 a day budget per head to feed her clients. That includes all meals, biscuits, coffee/tea.

I agree it looks awful as a meal.

But - I have previously worked in care homes and I have seen cases where a resident will specifically request something like this eg half an egg sandwich or just chips etc. So I’d probably want all the facts first before condemning the Home

It’s all well and good saying “it needs...” but perhaps the individual didn’t want any more?

It’s one photo. Nothing can be judged by one photo and if it is being used to ‘name and shame’ on social media it yet again shows why social media can be a bad thing.

It looks poor. Come on, how can you argue otherwise?

Amazed at all the people saying a folded piece of slimy plastic ham and a scattering of over cooked chips is not that bad.

Even if somebody requested just ham and chips that looks like a shit meal.

I did placement in a care home and the food was amazing! They staggered meal times, the patients sat with their friends, newspapers on tables etc. They day care staff were fab, played football with the residents, we used one of the patients zimmerframes as the goal post and they stayed sat down but it got their legs moving. We also set up skittles and helped everyone get up and push the balls.

I also did placement in an absolutely hideous care home, just after I'd been to the former. The staff spoke polish (were
in england) and I had no idea what was going on, they refused to let a patient eat where he wanted, gave everyone slop and laughed about it. Luckily my driving instructors wife worked for CQC at the time, I reported it to my instructor who told his wife and within a few months that place was shut and the patients moved else where. I have a feeling there was a lot more going on than I saw.

This is absolutely not acceptable.

@Coaltit

Thank you! I don't work in care any longer for this reason, and protests fall on deaf ears, it's so easy to get up in arms about things like this and for it to go nuts on social media - I have just seen the post shared and I live no where near the location. But society guns for the first line of care when anything goes wrong, they seem little interested in the fact that someone is turning a profit from this, and that they, like most businesses will cut what they can to increase profits. The best care homes I've worked in are the small family run ones, less than 20 residents, usually an ex nurse or doctor owning and managing - the attitude filters down and all the staff give the same level, the owners draw a wage, but there's little in the way of profits. The worst are the bigger companies. I worked for one company with 8 homes, they were barely in the country, drove beautiful cars and expensive clothes, yet the home needed new equipment and updating, we gave our time for free to help activities go ahead that we'd fundraised for, and the cook was expected to provide meals on a tiny budget. We were frequently short staffed, with a flat refusal for agency because they cost too much. It's shit for the staff, but at least we got to leave at the end of the day, the residents couldn't, that was their life and it's not good enough.
But until some form of cap is applied to profit in this kind of business, it won't stop.

@Brokenwing
That doesn't surprise me at all - and it's the owners/companies that set the budgets, not the managers or staff. A manager I worked with once used to boast about the fact she got a bonus for coming in under budget - how can that even be allowed? It's encouraging low standards. She wasn't a very good manager and the home was put on a bed stop by the CQC under her - I'd hope those types of manager are few. (not saying DSIL is like that btw!)

If this is an ongoing issue and not a 'one off', then the CQC would be pleased to hear of it, especially if the proper complaints channels were gone through first.

On it's own, this does appear to be utterly disgraceful, but again, the full picture would be useful.

5yearplan i saw a suggestion from an MNer on a "how can we save the NHS" thread that patients should pay for all their hospital food while in hospital ............or no food.

this is how care homes etc are getting away with it They know they can because of attitudes like this.

The food provided in care homes is frequently gross and it’s disgusting. The amount of money these poor people often pay to stay there and the trust they are placing in the staff to provide for them is huge and then they don’t even get such a basic thing as good nutrition?? I hate it. Nutrition is so incredibly important and it’s just not taken seriously. I’ve worked in a few care homes when I was a nurse and I despaired. The lack of fresh vegetables, using powdered eggs, no healthy/filling snack choices. Trying to get a salad from kitchens was sometimes like trying to get blood from a stone. Suggestions/complaints/requests often fell on deaf ears. All you can do OP, is speak with the staff but chances are they are just as frustrated as you are. Cost cutting is often to blame which is the worst situation as staff are powerless as much as they may like to see improvement as much as you do.

What is that?

Care homes charge fees. The least they can do is provide nutritious meals. Frozen veg can be bought so cheaply!

Every person deserves a properly nutritious meal.

I appreciate that many elderly people in care homes suffer with Alzheimer’s or dementia and may refuse veg. But it should be put on their plate anyway. They may eat it, they may not. However they should be served real meals.

I posted the above and stand by it. One of my grandmothers is a lifelong functioning anorexic. Left to her own devices she will, at 80, eat half a crumpet a day. Key words there are “to her own devices”...the whole point of being in a care home is that they’re cared for in a way they can’t be in their own home or with family.

Without someone providing her with proper meals (granted child size ones), she would starve herself to death within weeks in a care home.

There is nothing on that plate that I want to eat.

If care home are having to budget that closely to feed their residents, they would do better dropping the ham and looking at vegetarian meals.

I hate chips. I hate ham.

Im deffo going to remember this thread next time someone insists that eating healthier is cheaper than eating unhealthily on another thread.

Because if this was actually true the cost cutting would mean that the residents living in the home you were working in Junkmail would have been getting the healthy meals!!!!!!!!!!

Eating processed junk is only cheaper if you don't cook. If you use seasonal veg and pulses, eggs, spices and even a little meat to cook, the price per head can be lower than even the cheapest processed food.

We still don't know if the person served that meal asked for ham and chips or were just given it. For every person that hates ham and chips there will be at least one who would love it and would hate being forced to eat vegetables all the time.

Instead of people complaining about the food being unhealthy, others will complain that the food is not to their taste. It's all well and good offering healthy food, but there's plenty of people who won't want to eat it.

www.bda.uk.com/news/view?id=138

The British Dietetic Association is disappointed to see that only eight per cent of children aged 11-18 and 27% of adults aged 19-64 years are meeting the 5-a-day recommendation for fruit and vegetable intake with an average consumption of 2.8 portions per day for children aged 11-18

The Mumsnet attitude to vegetables is not typical of the UK population as a whole. The closest some people come to a vegetable is tomato sauce on their pizza.

My Dad spent a lot of time in hospital and some time in a care home, and the food was mostly good, with vegetables. But he got to pick off a menu, so if he wanted ham and chips every day, he could have had it.

My limited experience of hospital food is that it's poor. As an in-patient my dh would bring in salads and soups to keep me going (luckily we don't live far). When my dd was hospitalised as a small toddler we did the same...our local hospital cannot provide meat or protein alternative, veg and starch in one meal. They are incapable.

All those working in homes or have worked in them need to contact the council and the quality care commission.

Address concerns and add.. Should an expose ever come out of this place I have this record of my email trying to alert people.

Please tell people don't complain to the home complain to outside people! Don't leave and say nothing those are vulnerable people who can't speak out.

We desperately need trip advisor style report and anynmous feedback for homes.

I can't imagine being physically fragile, vulnerable and left to rot in one of the thousands of appalling homes

When I was 17 I worked in home and food budget was in the pence every day. A lady who complained was sent to Coventry. I heard the chef saying he knew it was cold but he would have to wash up another pan if he had to re heat it.

Cold tomatoes soup. Measly slice of bread. Strict time line getting everyone down. Rushing delicate old people... Rather than having two sittings!

It was just ridiculous awful nasty nasty place and that was best in area. It looked like glorious county house hotel with antiques....