Nov 7

Hospital food

"I ended up going to the canteen and getting a curry and rice for $13!"

Last week my youngest grandchild was in hospital for a week, with his mother, undergoing various tests to zero in on the specifics of his epilepsy. It was a public hospital because the epilepsy expert is a professor there. It is a teaching hospital. And first let me say that the medical attention was excellent.

No this is about the food. There's probably not a lot to say really other than that it was awful, but I will try. I do not even know what the food in this particular photograph is - an omelette? Mashed potato? I have no idea at all what the orangey stuff was, but of course there is broccoli which looks as if it has been boiled to death. I will scatter various other photographs through the post so that you can see that it is all pretty much awful. That quote at the top of the page is from his mother who, of course, also had to endure the food.

I tried to find some articles on the topic, and there were indeed quite a few on English hospitals, but, of course, that is not necessarily relevant to our hospitals here. So I have ignored them, other than to note that most of the hospitals over there do not in fact cook the food on the premises. The hospital food over there is mostly sub-contracted to mass production companies who have very long contracts to provide food. So the pre-cooked food is mostly delivered to the hospitals frozen and then reheated. I'm guessing that this might also happen here, but I do not know and cannot quickly find out.

Of course outsourcing is often seen as a cost-cutting exercise, although why? Sure - you don't then need a massive kitchen that can turn out vast quantities of meals. You also don't need to pay the people to cook it. But surely those outsourcing companies who have those costs, charge for them, plus a bit on top. Sometimes more than a bit. I have never really understood the philosophy of outsourcing as a cost-cutting exercise. For me outsourcing is only useful if it is for a specialist thing, that you cannot easily provide for yourself, or something that requires a lot of extra administration. And if you outsource the food then surely you have to have in-house staff dedicated to making sure that the food provided is of an appropriate nutritional standard.

Also from those articles that I found on the English situation it seems that the food wastage is huge. Prue Leith, in a damning article on British hospitals, said that some ran at 70% wastage! If you provided better food then there would be much less wastage.

This is a typical menu that my grandson received in the morning for his day's food. On paper it doesn't look so bad - although definitely not really exciting. And I suppose there are indeed choices. Back in the day I don't think you got choices. I certainly don't remember any when I was in hospital after having given birth. What did Max say about it? Well we had to squeeze it out of him:

"the hospital food was bad. The meals were bad. I didn't try the ones I didn't like. I liked the ice cream. I liked the milk shakes. The juice and the breakfast. I liked ordering off the menu nuggets and chips and sauce"

Well he is, of course, a child, and maybe therefore they - children that is - are allowed to order things like chicken nuggets. One just hopes that there was actually real chicken in the nuggets. Maybe he is also less likely to eat what he doesn't like the look of. He also has the disadvantage - in this case - of having two parents who like to cook - and two older sisters too - and so the food he gets at home is of really good quality. However, even if he was allowed to order 'off menu' surely a hospital would be offering something better than chicken nuggets and chips. Where is the salad or the vegetable?

Here is another thing I would like to add which is not so much to do with quality, but more with supply. In the last few years I have had a couple of minor hospital procedures which entailed a stay overnight. I had to fast from the night before - understandable of course, but at no point was I offered any food at all. In the end I asked and got a very ordinary sandwich. Yes I know that hospitals distribute their menu requests to their inpatients in the morning, and the meals are then organised accordingly. Surely, however, they can distribute menus to incoming surgical patients with an overnight stay as part of the reception procedure. And anyway, even if they can't get the patient to choose for whatever bureaucratic reason, surely there would be leftover meals - just give them what is left. These two experiences were in private hospitals as well. Now the insurance company covered all the hospital costs, but those costs are very high - $1600 a night one friend who takes note of these things said - and surely you could expect a meal as part of those costs. Medical staff and medical equipment of course cost vast amounts of money, but the odd meal could surely be included. Is it a deliberate policy to cut costs one wonders. Or just poor organisation?

I am aware of course, that my test sample is minute but those British articles imply that it's not uncommon. I am also aware that one hospital is not the same as another. There probably are good hospital meals out there. This is one Australian example that I found in an article on hospital meals around the world. Plum chicken with plum sauce. Much better looking.

Of course we don't expect haute cuisine in hospital. We probably don't even expect the kind of food we would be served in a middle rung restaurant, but we do expect hospital food to be at least eatable and also nutritious - maybe the standard of your local Italian restaurant. But nowhere, other than in a school perhaps, is it more important to ensure that your customer is eating well. The meals that my young grandson and his mother were offered last week, did not meet that standard.

Why?

POSTSCRIPTS

We dined with our friends on Cup Day after a day trip walking around Healesville reservoir, and I provided dessert - which was Nigel Slater's Marsala almond chocolate slice. I was quite pleased with the result. I know there are thousands of chocolate cake recipes out there, but this was a good one - very rich, moist - 'fudgy' says Nigel and quite easy. One of those where you beat the sugar with egg yolks and later fold in the beaten egg whites. It's flourless too. I was quite pleased because it looked almost like Nigel's - on the left - mine on the right. Yes it sank in the middle but so did Nigel's. You need cream of some kind.