No one goes to hospital for the food. While the doctors and nurses work their magic, we submit to daily showings of “Guess What’s Coming For Dinner”. We may complain about the lack of taste as we try to figure out exactly what’s on the end of our forks, but by and large we accept the below par diet as a given.
But what if the food being dished up is not merely tasteless but is actually holding back our recovery? Peter Dingle, an environmental and nutritional toxicologist who teaches at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia, recently took a children’s hospital to task for the quality of its menu. Standard offerings include hot dogs, sausage rolls, polony sandwiches on white bread and chocolate custard.
“If you feed kids healthy foods they will heal faster,” Dr Dingle argues. “But what hope have these kids got if the hospital feeds them this kind of rubbish?”
He’s right. And it’s not just the kids who suffer. Elderly patients also get the raw end of the stick with overcooked mush standard fare in nursing homes and hospitals. A friend who visited her mother in hospital recently was so alarmed at the quality of the “cuisine” she started to bring in home-made soup each day.
Real food nourishes and when we are at our most vulnerable – ie, sick – we need nourishment more than ever. We’ve all heard the jokes about hospital food, but the reality is no laughing matter. The stuff being dished up in many hospitals around the world is often processed, high in salt and sugar, and of little or no nutritional value. It’s a sad fact that the food is more often driven by budget considerations than the good it will do the people the hospital has committed to heal.
Food that heals, not harms
Not all hospitals are guilty of crimes against nutrition. Some wised up to the problem long ago and brought in consultants or staff to rehabilitate offending kitchens, with impressive results.
Take the Royal Brompton Hospital in the UK. Its visionary catering service manager Mike Duckett saw his role as being as much about healing as that of the medical staff. “Morally Iʼve got a responsibility to actually look after peopleʼs health and what weʼre eating these days is totally unhealthy, all this pre-packed food, pre-cooked food… it doesnʼt do anyone any good.”
The hospital is one of four working with Sustain: The Alliance for Better Food and Farming on the London Hospital Food project, aimed at sourcing as much food as possible from local and organic producers. Mike also focuses on seasonal fare for optimum nutrition.
Royal Brompton hosted a debate on hospital food organised by the Soil Association and attended by organic devotee Prince Charles, earlier this year. The fact that such a debate is still necessary is an indictment on national health systems around the world. If we tell everyone they need to eat better for their health and then dish them up rubbish in centres for healing, something really is wrong.
Poor diet cost adds up
Jesse Ziff Cool can’t wait to get her hands on the menu at Stanford Hospital in California. The organic proponent and chef runs Cool Cafe at Stanford University’s Cantor Arts Center and has come to know many of the hospital staff who regularly eat at her fresh food haven. She says she’s been begging for ages to be let into the hospital kitchen. Her persistence has paid off and she’s been hired as a consultant to work on a better menu.
“I promised them I could deliver nutritious, wholesome food and it won’t cost them any extra,” she says. “The food will be simple; things like an organic chicken soup… it doesn’t have to be complicated, it just has to be delicious and nourishing.”
While Jesse has only just started work on the project she is optimistic about its prospects and hopes to see it rolled out through other hospitals across the States.
Even if organic and fresh, local food do cost a hospital a bit extra in the short term, however, surely it saves us all a lot of money in the long run. The better the food, the quicker the recovery and the less likely that patient is to end up back in hospital.
We all know the costs of poor diet; it’s one of the reasons our hospitals are under so much pressure. The place you go to get better should be the one place where you are guaranteed to be well fed.
