healthmedicinet

• The Mail has been publishing photographs of food sent in by readers
  
• They paint an unappetising picture of meals served in hospitals
• Doctors are expressing concerns about the dinners patients are eating
• Michael Seres, 45, from Radlett, Hertfordshire, is a veteran of hospital wards 
• ‘The quality of the food is shocking,’ he says. He now brings in his own
  

By
Lucy Elkins for The Daily Mail
and Cara Lee for the Daily Mail
and Diana Pilkington for the Daily Mail

Published:
16:57 EST, 1 September 2014

|
Updated:
19:13 EST, 1 September 2014

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The essentials in Michael’s suitcase for hospital include snacks, even sandwiches

Michael Seres is a veteran of hospital wards. The businessman, 45, has suffered from Crohn’s disease – inflammation of the gut – since the age of 12, and has been in and out of hospital ever since.

‘I’ve had 25 operations, intestinal failure and, in 2011, I had a bowel transplant,’ he says.

Consequently, he has become something of an expert on what he needs to pack for a hospital stay.

Along with his pyjamas and toothbrush, the other essentials in Michael’s suitcase include snacks, even sandwiches. Michael has learned the hard way that, if he doesn’t take food, he may not eat.

For Michael, diet is especially vital, as his condition means he does not absorb as many nutrients as he should – yet, he says, what he is served on the ward is often inedible.

‘The quality of the food is shocking,’ says Michael, from Radlett, Hertfordshire. ‘So much so that no clinician has ever advised me to eat it. they’ve told me to bring my own, or buy some from outside.

‘The last sandwich I had in hospital was so soaking wet when I took it out of the packet that I could actually wring it out. Eggs and milk always seem to be powdered, which comes out as a congealed lump.

‘When I’ve been served macaroni cheese, I’ve played games of “hunt the shell” with the nurses, because there will just be three tiny tubes in the entire dish. Part of the problem is that, over the past 30 years, I’ve seen a lot of hospitals reduce their kitchens, buying in food from elsewhere that’s frozen and then reheated.

‘By the time it’s brought up to the wards, any goodness it had has gone, and you’re left with a congealed mess. You just don’t want to touch it. I’m lucky – I have family who can bring me food to hospital. And, whenever I go to hospital, I pack some food to take with me.’

Michael isn’t the only one. Over the past week, the Mail has been publishing photographs sent in by readers of food they have been served in hospital – and they paint an unappetising picture of what’s on offer.

Two boiled potatoes on a plate, accompanied only by gravy. A meagre-looking, white-bread sandwich, filled with a sliver of cheese. an overcooked mound of broccoli next to luminous-coloured sauce. Some photos sent in show meals that look as if they have been burnt.

Now doctors, too, are expressing concerns about the food served to hospital patients. One senior consultant told Good Health he finds it ‘unbearable’ to see seriously-ill patients unable to eat the food served to them.

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Sausage and fries at Royal Blackburn Hospital Kidderminster, and a hospital’s mushroom stroganoff

‘My elderly patients, some of whom have dementia, or who are physically frail, probably have two-thirds of their food left on the plate,’ says Anton Emmanuel, a consultant gastroenterologist at University College Hospital, London.

‘Patients who are the most infirm are the ones who leave the most. That’s common to the point of being almost unbearable. The food is almost always boiled, with mashed potato and broccoli so over-cooked that it’s floppy.

‘There are often things such as beef stew with gravy and bits of mince floating around it. When I see what’s being served, it is mortifying.’

The poor state of hospital food was brought home to Dr Aseem Malhotra, a London cardiologist, when his  64-year-old mother was in hospital recently with pneumonia.

‘What they served her was atrocious – reheated ready meals consisting of salty lumps of processed meat and tasteless vegetables. she could barely touch it,’ he says.

He did what many with a relative in hospital do: took in home-cooked meals for his mother. Her mood and physical health started to improve.

‘That experience confirmed something I’ve known for years as a doctor working in hospitals in London and Manchester: hospital food, by and large, is appalling,’ he says.

‘Yet we know that poor nutrition is a risk factor for patients being  re-admitted to hospital within 30 days of discharge, often with a condition entirely unrelated to what they were [first] admitted for.’

The Government now says it is going to take action to help ensure that all hospitals – not just a select few – serve good-quality food.

Last week, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said that, for the first time, there would be ‘mandatory food standards’ enforced through legally-binding NHS contracts, and hospitals that don’t provide good enough food could be fined.

Michael, who had a bowel transplant, has seen a lot of hospitals reduce their kitchens, buying in frozen food

Food will be rated on criteria such as quality and choice of meals and published in a league table on the NHS Choices website.

The results so far show while some hospitals have made headway, others have some way to go. For example, Lee Mill hospital, in Plymouth, scores 35 per cent for food quality.  Some hospitals scored the full 100.

It’s not the first time a government has tried to improve hospital food. Since 1992, £54 million has been ‘wasted’ on 21 initiatives to try to raise standards, according to the Campaign for Better Hospital Food.

And they would appear not to have worked – a report by Age UK in 2010, for example, found that 180,000 people each year still leave hospital with malnutrition.

And, last year, figures from the Office for National Statistics revealed that 499 hospital patients had died from conditions linked to malnutrition since 2003.

Over the same period, there were 1,323 deaths in hospitals where dehydration was the underlying cause. The Patients Association says it receives complaints – not just about the quality of food, but also the portion sizes.

Mash with carrot at West Suffolk

A tiny salad at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary

Chelsea and Westminster’s offering

‘Patients don’t expect restaurant-quality, but they do expect, and deserve, decent and nutritious food,’ says Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association.

‘Great advances have been made in medicine and surgery, but hospital food has, sadly, been ignored. For too long patients have been offered unappetising, unacceptable food.’

So, will the proposals help, and do they go far enough? Many have their doubts, but what is not in question is the importance of giving patients good-quality food. ‘Without good nutrition, nothing else works – the antibiotics, the recovery from surgery, or the treatment for diabetes or heart disease,’ says Catherine Collins, principal dietitian at  St George’s Hospital in London.

 
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