in the news
- April 3, 2008
Hospital food is officially shit
A year long study that concluded last September has reported that more than 50 per cent of patients in NSW hospitals are malnourished.
Two thirds of those patients either presented to hospital in a malnourished state or worsened while they were in hospital. Two dieticians working in the NSW health system told an inquiry into the hospital system they had no input into what foods were served to patients and no dieticians were involved at the Department Of Health, which developed hospital menus … no doubt overseen by accountants.
According to Rhonda Matthews, leader of the study:
“Malnourished patients are also more subject to infection, dehydration, diarrhoea, depression and their wounds take longer to heal.
“We’ve found that the patients who have some degree of malnutrition in our hospitals were staying in hospital twice as long as those who were not malnourished.”
Joanne Prendergast said food, linen and other non-medical services were not incorporated into the overall patient care from a medical perspective, and she recommended more flexibility for individual patients’ dietary needs. She said:
“If they’re getting the food (packaged) presented in that way and they couldn’t access it they didn’t eat it,”
“They’re starving if we don’t support their nutritional needs.”
I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone arguing that the food is shit. In my experience it certainly is - you really have to be starving to want to eat it (not to mention the weird meal times, which are undoubtedly designed around staff rosters rather than patient needs), and inevitably only about 1/3 of the food served up is even vaguely worth eating. My last hospital experience goes back 8 years, but my son was there last year and hardly touched any of his food.
Next startling revelation - airline food is shit, too!
5 Responses to “Hospital food is officially shit”
Holy cow, that’s horrible!
By Diane Scott (1 comments.) on Apr 3, 2008
I am not surprised. When my son went into hospital I told them he was coeliac and allergic to milk. Breakfast was WEETBIX, LOW FAT MILK and TOAST.
Idiots.
By Kelley (9 comments.) on Apr 5, 2008
Perhaps it is a not so subtle plan to free up beds. I have not been in hospital lately, but my father in law spent some of his last days there. Perhaps this just heightened his lack of will to live. Sad.
Bring on Jamie Oliver and make some healfy food.
Kelley
My wife and daughter are gluten and dairy intolerant and can identify with your frustration. When she was flying in America, they would just remove anything with dairy or gluten from the meals, meaning that the meals would be pretty bare. Australia is a lot better than America for this.
Seems to me that one way to get people to heal quicker is to give them nice food.
By Colin Campbell (40 comments.) on Apr 5, 2008
Haven`t had much chance to eat hospital food lately (Luckily!) but airline food is definitely shit. I usually make sandwhiches and take them with me because the airline food makes me want to vomit…
By Lulu (2 comments.) on Apr 6, 2008
Ugh!
I am not surprised at all. Working in the hospital system I used to see it on a daily basis and now that my little one is there more often than is normal, I see it from a whole different perspective. Our recent stint had my daughter lose weight.
By tiff (10 comments.) on Apr 9, 2008