Better hospital food
In our new report, 'First Aid for Hospital Food', we reveal that several hospitals are proving that it's possible to source fresh, local and organic food with no impact on cost. But too many are still falling short of acceptable standards.
If you're in hospital, one of the things you might expect would be decent fresh food. However, a third of people who either stayed or had a close family member stay in hospital in 2010 say the food they received was unacceptable and over half wouldn't feed it to a child. What's more, 29% of respondents in our recent survey say the food was so bad that at times they couldn't recognise what was on their plate, while nearly a quarter (24%) opted out of the catering entirely – choosing instead to have every meal brought into them by their relatives.
These shocking findings will be familiar to many of us who have encountered poor quality hospital food ourselves over the years, or to anyone who has seen surveys of the sector in the past. It was 1963 when the Nuffield Trust first surveyed hospital food and found it was generally cold, overcooked muck with poor nutritional content – and numerous other studies have found similar in the half century since. Indeed recent statistics show that up to 40% of adults and 15% of children admitted to hospital leave showing signs of malnutrition.
A different way
It may seem that with such a rich history of failure, the problems with hospital catering are somehow endemic – last year Sustain found that over £50 million had been wasted in the last ten years trying to improve hospital food. And many of those running hospital trusts with unhealthy food are happy to repeat the mantra that they simply cannot afford better quality.
However, as our new research report reveals, this assumption just isn't true – there are many hospitals around the country who are serving fresher, healthier food to patients without breaking their catering budgets.
Our principled approach to hospital food is the same as for schools, nurseries or any other catering service. We want to see caterers cooking real meals with real ingredients – fresh, whole ingredients sourced from local and organic farmers. Our Food for Life catering mark outlines a framework for doing this, and while not every hospital we've worked with has adopted our standards to the letter, the basic approach has proved successful.
Following work we did with Cornish hospitals in 2006, our patron, the Prince of Wales, convened a seminar of 19 NHS chief executives who were interested in improving the quality of their food, and 13 of those hospitals have made direct changes to their catering to source fresher, more local food.
For example, the Royal Brompton Hospital caters for 295 beds and 1,300 staff and cooks all food fresh on the premises. It found sourcing from smaller, local suppliers did not increase costs. Nottingham University Hospitals Trust has saved money by cooking their own ham, using pork from a local farmer, while Sussex NHS Foundation Trust saved 20% when it started sourcing vegetables from a local market gardener. Meanwhile the North Bristol NHS Trust has significantly changed its catering to achieve a Food for Life bronze standard, all while sticking to its existing budget of £2.20 per patient per day.
Fresh futures
Most of those making changes have relied heavily on enthusiasm and flexibility of approach. What's clear is that the failure of other hospitals to provide decent fresh food has little or nothing to do with money. What is needed is commitment, skill, leadership and a determination to give reasonable priority to providing patients and staff with good food. The pioneering hospitals we've looked at show that such an approach need not cost more and yet improves patients' health outcomes, benefits local communities and provides vital support for British farming. Those still lagging behind should be ashamed of themselves.
Read our reports