Hospital Food: The Continuing Need For Intensive Care:
Hospital Food: The Continuing Need For Intensive Care:
“It’s a recipe for disaster, a complete disgrace”. It was with these few succinct words that the South African-British cookery writer,
Prue Leith, in an article for the Guardian in June 2018 (reported at the time on this website) excoriated the standard of the meals being provided in UK hospitals. As she pointed out then, 80,000 of the dishes offered to patients were left untouched 
every day and two-thirds of the staff admitted they wouldn’t consider eating any of it themselves. Leith was subsequently recruited, in her role as a celebrity chef, by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) as an advisor for its Hospital Food 
Review This focused especially on ensuring that whatever was being offered in the wards was both nutritious and safe, thereby avoiding a repeat of the scandal in 2019 involving poisonous “listeria monocytogenes” in sandwiches and salads.
The fundamental problem, Leith has told the “What’s Cooking” newsletter, is that the
NHS just doesn’t accept the argument that good food is medicine and that patients will recover faster and vacate those much-needed beds sooner if they are eating well. She was, however, cited in an extensive 
assessment of the sector by the Guardian correspondent Mina Holland on 9th November, as describing the meals at St Richard’s hospital in Chichester, West Sussex as “the best institutional food she had ever eaten”.
Leith’s apparent optimism is not universally shared. On 21st February, the Scottish Daily Mail
highlighted the torrent of condemnatory remarks being made about the 
Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow. Although the care was first class, declared one, the food was inedible, disgusting and was “more likely to make you ill than help you get better”. Holland’s Guardian coverage also mentioned “a man in Glasgow served a plate of turkey and potatoes so hideous that the local NHS (National Health Service) board was moved to issue a public apology”.
According to an investigation conducted by the King’s Fund Library, the
most common reason many patients either don’t start or finish their meal is that it looks unappetising (49.2%). This is followed by “dislike the taste” (39.6%), “no appetite /unwell” (36.3%), “wrong temperature” (24.6%), “choice unavailable” (21.3%), “prefer food brought by visitor”(17.5%), “served too early or too late”(17.1%).
Equally revealing was “the fascinating new league table” ranking every NHS trust in the UK which, observed the Daily Mail’s Health reporter, Emily Stearn, in April 2023, exposed the “dire state” of hospital food. This was based on the responses from 5,877 patients questioned on the choice of food offered, access to menus, 24-hour availability, the taste, texture and “appropriateness of the serving temperature”. The Harrogate and District NHS Trust, Mid Cheshire Hospitals and Yorkshire & Scarborough Teaching Hospitals got the
worst approval ratings. The BUPA (British United Provident Association) Group was classified as the best with the Christie and Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trusts second and third.
For decades, Stearn pointed out, patients have complained about dreary meals, cold dinners, tiny portions and burnt food as well as occasions when, for example, they’ve been given “just three fish fingers and vegetable patties with a dollop of sauce on top”. Which is why, last November, NHS England launched its new legally binding national standards which require trusts to offer hot food 24/7, allow patients to choose their dinner from bed and make vegetable and fish dishes more available.
Stearn estimates that the NHS dispenses 140 million meals to patients every year and that there are 1.2 million members of staff who require food and drink on shift. A fifth of the hot dishes at NHS hospitals are apparently produced at one factory in Wiltshire, owned by the private
firm Apetito, and are then “shipped as far as 650 miles away”. Apetito operates in Germany (where it was founded), the Netherlands, Austria, Spain, France, the UK, Canada and the USA. It purports on its website that its more than “200 delicious, nutritionally-balanced soups, mains, sides and desserts, all made with fresh ingredients, enhance patient satisfaction and reduce food wastage”.
Both Lorna Middleton, a participant in the Sheffield Food Partnership, and Kitty Drake, a contributor to Mina Holland’s analysis, agree that switching away from using outside catering companies for ready nutriments and instead cooking on-site fresh food procured locally would improve quality and save the NHS money. In 2023, observes Drake, 3,600 tonnes of inedible meals were thrown away, so clearly, if it gets better, less of it will end up in the bin.
Reducing unnecessary expenditure is likely to appeal to both the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel
Reeves and her Labour Government colleague, Health Secretary Wes Streeting.The former, in her budget on 30th 
October, pledged to invest an additional £22 billion in the NHS and the latter informed the Annual Conference of NHS Providers in Liverpool on 13th November that henceforth hospitals will be graded on the basis of care delivery and finances, “so patients can see whether they are receiving a good service”. Neither so far have indicated whether these measures will be partly directed at improving hospital diets.