Why is NHS food so crap?

[SpeedyGonzalez]

here

Quite so.

I like the mumsnet suggestion in the comments - anyone game? Let's show them what's what!

Actually, it would be funny if we did send a suggested menu to the Chief Exec of the NHS...

Sardine - the 'free market' approach only leads to improvements where there is 'consumer' choice available and where the consumer exercises that choice.

I'm assuming the most powerful 'consumer' is the patient and, the GP (although they hold the budget) is the intermediary. But I could be wrong - especially if the GP doesn't respond to patient feedback.

I guess we will see how it works out.....

I spent 3 weeks on the Ante Natal ward - the only time I have ever been in hospital. Breakfast was cereal and toast. Not too bad. Lunch was a variation on mince. Generally nasty. Dinner was a sandwich. I was heavily PG, not dying. I was STARVING!

When dh came in the evening, he either brought a takeaway, or he escorted me to the hospital canteen. We weren't even allowed a cup of tea when we wanted one - pregnant women can't be trusted with hot water obviously . I ate a lot of Jaffa Cakes at that time.

I was in Chase Farm for 3 days after having a crash section with DD and the food was dreadful...

Every lunch and dinner time all the patients on the ward had to go to the ward kitchen and queue up to choose from a selection of about 8 frozen ready meals which were heated up in a microwave.

Inexplicably EVERY meal came with peas

I'd hate to think of people in there for a long period of time having to eat those meals twice a day every day...hardly nourishing....with such a low starting point surely it can only get better...

I was in hospital last weekend - the food was very good, far better than the medical care (don't ask, needless to say I am making a complaint)

I wasn't eating for a couple of the days, but the two meals I had were surprisingly good.

Sweet potato soup.
Cod with ratatouolle and green beans.
Roll and butter
Ice cream

Macaroni cheese
Baked potatoe
Fruit salad

Breakfast was toast and marmalade.

It was absolutely fine, a good mix (you had a choice of sandwich or hot meal for both lunch and dinner, pudding with both, starter for dinner in the evening).

The only thing was the times it was served - breakfast I don't normally eat so don't care about that, but lunch was half 11 and dinner ws 5. Too damn early but can understand why.

And don't get me started on the fact that you had to pay for a card to watch TV - and to park. Those 3 weeks cost us a fortune, what with petrol and extra food etc on top. I feel desperately sorry for seriously ill people who have to spend a long time in hospital, and their families.

jackstarb even if there were a genuine free choice as to where each patient can choose to go into hospital, the nature of the service is that people don't actually use it.

For instance people who are elderly are not going to choose the "best" hospital if it is 200 miles away from where they live.

People often choose what is local and easy, especially for low risk procedures.

I am also unconvinced that patients would choose a hospital with better food over one with a shorter waiting list or worse success rate for the procedure.

I'm just not convinced at all really.

Potato I mean.

I didn't have a telly - I was in a room in my own, but no telly, not that I really cared tbh.

DP bought me a strange selection of magazines, some I have never before read. Good Housekeeping, Hello, The Lady (wtf?) and Cosmopolitan.

I think he just picked up the nearest things he saw!

But DP spent an absolute fortune on parking - that is wrong imo. Parking is also contracted out as far as I know.

I has DS in Abergavenny hospital last summer and the food was fucking dreadful.

I mean, it was actually inedible. Even DP, who will cheerfully take things out of the compost bin to eat if he thinks I have been too hasty in throwing them in there, wasn't going to touch it.

'Spring vegetable soup' that was orange with gluey lumps of powder in it.

'Pasta and mushroom bake' - overcooked noodles swimming in tinned mushroom soup.

'Ice cream' served in a non-insulated cardboard tub, next to the hot food on the tray, in August - even when melted it retained its shape in a rather spooky way.

Luckily we were armed with my mums homemade almond biscuits, and then DP walked to the town centre and brought back sushi and strawberries, and we had a sunset picnic in the grounds while I was in labour

Staff thought we were nuts - I was being induced and they kept saying to me "Oh you really should have your hot dinner, keep your strength up". Yeah right.

Salisbury District has lovely food. Gorgeous homemade soup.

The food at the hospital in Haverfordwest, was disgusting, it comes in various shades of white,you can roughly guess what it's supposed to be by the size of lumps in it.

There is a very good reason why M&S have opened immediately next door,what heroes!i bet they sell 100s of sarnies each day.

I was in hospital a few years ago for a major surgical procedure. I stayed in for 7 days, and the food was excellent, and piping hot (unfortunately the ice cream was also piping hot - they had big overhead heaters on the trolleys so the food didn't get cold, and the ice cream was usually soup by the time you were served. But at least that made me laugh ). I was v weak after the operation and didn't fancy eating, but the food always looked tempting and tasted lovely, so I did end up eating it, or at least some of it.

I was an in-patient for a couple of days at the same hospital a few weeks later, this time on a general ward rather than a specialised surgical one. They had completely different food - and it was uniformly inedible. I literally could not swallow a bite. Cold, soggy, tasteless - and I wasn't given any choice - on the surgical ward I had been given a menu card every morning to fill in, on the general ward I just got given something unappetising.

And as for the food on the maternity ward when I had DD (different hospital) - it was awful! I filled in a menu card, but when they came round they had run out -two days running! I had a jacket potato with margerine one day and a stale processed-meat sandwich the next, no salad or vegetables or anything.

Yes, it's a sweeping statement, Sardine, but (a) have you read the article yet? and (b) look at how depressing this thread is! I rest my case.

Titsalina: "However the Royal Brompton in London has really nice food, they have a lot of choice and come round mid day with snacks for the kids, I couldn't rate thier food higher, it must be a budget thing." - or perhaps it's a Kensington thing. Dahling.

expat: "That's what privatisation is about, cutting corners to increase profits." And yet they spend through the nose for 'experts' such as Loyd Grossman to redesign the menu, and Ben de Lisi to redesign hospital garb. Arse over tits, innit? What dimwitted miscreant is running the NHS these days?

I do remember being served lovely food at a London private hospital...except that I ordered soup and it was clearly Campbell's . If they couldn't be arsed to cook it themselves the least they could have done was buy a Covent Garden fresh soup.

I quite like the food at my local hospital now, they went from the metal food trolley things, to the steamfresh system.

Most of the things are actually quite nice, salads are good and come with extras, sandwiches fine too. The food was probably the best thing on my last stay (having ds2).

I used to work at the same hospital and the only edible things from the old system were the omelettes and fish. The rest really was dried out and yuck. I do think the steamfresh thingys have improved things.

Speedygonzalez yes I read the article. I'm not sure what your point is though?

My point is that my 'sweeping generalisation' thread title was intentionally echoing the article.

because the tories fucked it..

oops

'because the tories fucked it UP'

NHS food is bad, but it's not THAT bad

Oh, Jareth, I SO want to agree with you wholesale. But you really should have seen the crap they dished up after I gave birth. A 1970s Pot Noodle with spam fritters crumbled over the top would have looked more appetising. All I could bear to eat out of a whole meal was the apple. And it was even a bleedin' Golden 'Delicious'.

So judging by this thread, there are a few pockets of the country where people are actually getting half decent (or even decent) meals in hospital, but the vast majority are being fed reconstituted shite on a plate. Yum. Good health, everyone!

I don't mean this time round, I mean when i was a child..

When I gave birth I was given a supposedly balanced meal which consisted of a plate of yellow mush. It was macaroni cheese and potatoes. Who serves pasta with potatoes, and who serves anything to anybody in a hospital that has no vegetables? Mad.

it was quite nice though

Arfety arf!

(and don't tell me you think potatoes don't count as a vegetable? )

They barely count as a vegetable (don't you me )

Especially once they've been skinned, boiled, reheated and yellowed by NHS kitched staff

I don't understand?

I said that the food in my hosp is good and wondered why they can get it right in some places and not others.

I don't understand why you have picked my posts out? What is it you disagree with?

I don't get why you are saying "sweeping statement" at me - I haven't said anything about sweeping statements?

Is it unwelcome to say that the food is good at my hosp and wonder why it isn't everywhere? I don't understand TBH I'm really confused. Didn't you like teh conversation I had with jackstarb about what effect provatisation would have?

I seem to have got right up your nose and I don't know why

Don't worry. Some folk take the humph for no obvious reason.

In the 30 years since I had my babies, to present day with my now grown up children having their babies, you'd think the idea of healthy eating and fresh food would have got through to NHS menus. Apparently not.

Last night i saw a promo for next Mondays' 'Dispatches' prog. on Channel 4.

It is investigating this very subject!

Aw you're nice Mo