Hospital food

I was in two hospitals for a week three years ago. The food was appalling. I made myself eat just enough to stop feeling sick with hunger and got my husband to bring fruit, crisps and biscuits in. I still lost weight. In one of them we got cereal and plain sliced bread for breakfast. Could not even have toast. No fresh whole fruit, hardly any veg.

Crun, it is not a question of gourmet meals or small portions. It is question of being given decent quality food well cooked and attractively presented. My last experience of hospital food was a dry cheese sandwich and a mug of soup made from soup powder and warm tap water. This was considered adequate nutrition after being nil by mouth for 24 hours. It was inedible and went in the waste bucket and I got no more to eat for another 12 hours.

I rest my case.

Don't even start me on this one! When DH was in hospital for a month having a stem cell transplant, which leaves most people suffering from sickness, diahhroea and mouth sores, and definitely no appetite, the food was beyond belief! Everything seemed to arrive as a thick brown sludge. Fortunately his nurses were always happy to produce milk shakes or warm up a bowl of porridge at any hour of the day or night.

Later when he was in a different hospital after an operation for peritonitis the choice of food seemed to be either microwaved curry or curled up cardboardy sandwiches. Totally unsuitable for someone whose intestines were in a delicate state already! His consultant told me to bring in packed lunches for him.

Sadly the first of these hospitals is one that turned down an offer of help from James Martin during his hospital food campaign.

bonji one problem is that hospital food on the whole is now "cook/chill". It is cooked elsewhere, chilled and then transported. I cannot remember even roughly how much per head moneywise each patient is allocated per day or week but it is abysmal.

Many hospitals no longer have a kitchen on site so one can no longer order eg scrambled egg if somebody cannot manage the main menu.

It's not cordon bleu, but it's not that bad either. If the NHS is as short of cash as reported, should we be spending limited resources on gourmet meals? When I'm in for a day or so I find that there's not enough of it, but even then, when I went in for a week I found that my appetite better matched the portion size after I'd been lazing around for couple of days.