Yesterday was an exciting day. I’ve been working on a secret project and yesterday was the special launch event.
Operation Hospital Food is currently a TV series showing how James Martin’s journey improving hospital food. Now my latest trip to hospital proved to me how much this project is needed, so I’m definitely in favour. Good nutrition is vital for recovery from illness. Not only that but illness can affect appetite so the foods needs to be appealing and tempting.
Now James has a great passion for transforming hospital meals but he can’t visit every hospital in the UK. Operation Hospital Food will be launching a website to support hospital caterers and I’ve been working on this behind the scenes analysing the recipes. It looks like its going to be an amazing resource with and the British Dietetic Association have been heavily involved bringing extra credibility to it.
Baby Judah struggled to gain weight after birth and lost 15% of his birth weight which led to an awful lot of stress and a hospital admission. We are ok now and he is small but perfectly formed 🙂
Now in my mind anyone in hospital needs a nutritious meal and not only that it needs to be appetising or it won’t be eaten. So imagine my surprise when I was dished up these beauties:
I had several meals where elements of the meal were not sent over by the kitchen. This ranged from the piece of fruit to the entire main course not arriving. Pretty tricky for the poor ward staff who were left with a breastfeeding mum with a wheat intolerance and a few other dietary needs who they had to rustle someting up for. I must say how good the ward staff were and how annoyed they were by the whole palava.
I got round the tricky food issue by ordering lots of jacket potatoes and asking friends to bring food in. Not ideal but it got me through.
I found the whole experience eye opening as a dietitian. I’ve later learnt that this particular hospital has a reputation for its bad food, sad isn’t it…… I’d love to know your experiences and thoughts on hospital food.
Freelance Dietitian specialising in helping those with Eating Disorders and a Media Spokesperson for the profession.
