Sunday 17 September 2017

Anyone for hospital food?

One day, when I was in Malawi, we drove past a hospital. On the opposite side of the road, among the trees and mud banks, was a village of tents and shacks and makeshift food stalls.

‘For the relatives,’ Everlasting explained. (If you don't know who Everlasting is, click here!) ‘They know what people like to eat - so they can bring tasty food to the sick people in the hospital, good food that will help them get better.’

I don't know how many of you have sampled hospital food recently. But I've come across it twice in the past few months - and in two very different hospitals. Even so, the experience was similar.

Breakfast - cereal, and toast and tea - if you're lucky. You need to be awake when the nurse has five minutes to get it for you. Miss that window, and you have to wait till lunchtime. 

Most hospitals give you a lunch menu the day before. But there is no guarantee that they will have whatever is it you have asked for - or if it will be palatable. (Meals are cooked in a central factory, up to three months in advance.) Which is just tough for anyone with a special diet - or even a vegetarian (hardly a ‘special diet’ these days).

Tea - is a tired sandwich or soup that began life in a tin.

It's the cuts, of course - diets reduced to a bare minimum. No thought of offering something tasty and tempting to encourage sick people to eat. Which is why, if you should be visiting a hospital at lunchtime, you will see so many people arriving with plastic boxes full of something truly tasty. ‘They know what people like to eat - so they can bring tasty food to the sick people in the hospital, good food that will help them get better,’ as Everlasting said.

80% of the population of Malawi live in poverty. So it's not surprising that it's a challenge for hospitals to provide adequate nutrition to patients as well as treatments and medication. 


But in a wealthy economy like ours? There may be a conversation to be had about whether patients should make a contribution towards their food. But, as things are, patients with relatives nearby who have the time and energy to provide good nutrition will fare better than those with no one. Yet another division between those who have family to fight for them and those who are alone and abandoned.

12 comments:

  1. It's not just the food. This happened a long time ago, but twice I woke up after an operation in a different ward from the one I'd been in and had to traipse along corridors in bare feet and a hospital gown to retrieve my stuff. They probably expect family to do that. The food was okay, though.

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    1. I'm glad you were fed well, Miriam - and these days they are much better and keeping people no stuff together.

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  2. I don't know what to feel about this. We have no NHS here in the Netherlands but we still have to bring comforts to our loved ones in hospital.

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    1. But what happens to people who have no one, Val?

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  3. The Senior Cat (aka as my father) has just come home from hospital. He didn't even get offered toast for breakfast - there was something called "porridge" which, from Scots ancestry, he didn't recognise and a piece of white chewy stuff that he thinks was supposed to be bread.(I make ours so I suppose that was also unrecognisable.) He didn't recognise what he was given for lunch and tea was much as you describe. I've been so ill with the same bug myself that I could have had him in respite for a week but I decided he would starve. It should not be beyond the capacity of a modern commercial kitchen to turn out something simple, cheap, tasty and nourishing. When I explained how meals were catered for he was appalled. If he ever needs to go back to hospital then I hope I will be well enough to take his meals to him - the Africans know a thing or too, as do the Greeks, Cypriots and Italians here!

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    1. In a wealthy country - like yours and mine - you'd have thought we could feed sick people better than this.

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  4. I'm always complaining about hospital food. The quantity on your plate is not enough to keep a fly alive. Sometimes it's okay ,sometimes awful. I have complained in past about having no salt,pepper,or sauces to help make it palatable. This resulted in the kitchen sending me a bag of condiments,

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    1. I'm sorry you, too, have had to manage the dreadful food. I only hope you manage to get well in spite of it.

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  5. I think there should be a conversation about the health service, period. The way things are going it's just going to get worse. Great post. Sorry to hear that you've been in hospital twice.

    Greetings from London.

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    1. I agree - we need a discussion about the health service. This is just a symptom of its problems.

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  6. I thought some chef or another was championing good hospital food, as it aided recovery ~ I expect this vile penny-pinching bunch of elitist neo-nazis have cut the budget. Let them eat gruel?

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    1. I knew I could rely on you to get to the nub of it, Carol.

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