Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Hospital Food

Dontcha just love it?

A lighter post - TV chef Loyd Grossman, who for five years headed the NHS's Better Food in Hospital's programme to improve the quality and nutritional value of food provided in hospitals, has complained about the government's lack of commitment to the project.

The Better Hospital Food website is certainly appetising. Baked Salmon with Lemon, Garlic and Parsley Crust, Grilled mackerel with Tomato, Ginger and Thyme Sauce, Chicken Kofta Curry, Ratatouille Tart with Mozarella, Pasta, Ham and White Bean Bake - you can even download the recipes to try out at home.

However, I couldn't find any Fish and Chips with Baked Beans. In fact, no mention of children's recipes at all. I seem to recall that there has been a similar move in the UK to make school dinners more nutritional with limited success given children's preferences for junk food.

And given that Kezia developed food obsessions due to the chemotherapy for such things as chips, roast chicken crisps etc.

In fact the catering facilities at RMCH weren't bad. The hospital cafeteria had a varied menu of hot dishes and a variety of cold snacks. Ok after four weeks being resident in the hospital I could notice the same dishes being repeated over. On the ward resident parents had access to a kitchen with cooker, microwave, refridgertaor and freezer at all times except when the childrens' food was being served and in the parents' accommodation attached to the ward there was a similarly equipped kitchen. Tea and coffee, yoghurts, biscuits etc were available in the ward kitchen.

Update: Do see Lucia's comment - yes, young adult dietary requirements or even, let us say, tastes are somewhat different to those of small children.

2 comments:

Lucia said...

hospital food=diabolical. Feeding a teenager on two fish fingers and literaly 2 spoonfools of tinned spaghetti is apalling, especially a sick teenager.

Angus said...

From my frien Talia "right : small kids like sweets. serve them the dessert first (and don't let it be anything OTHER than sweet fruit!). after 20 min. digestion of fruit, follow this by some nice potatoe/sweet potatoe/turnip/etc. mash (alone or mixed), mixed in with mashed veggies, all of it cooked in some sort of chicken/fish/etc. stock. (real) sweet butter would also be nice at this point...even a tiny bit of full cream. can't go wrong. now that they've eaten the fruit + their desguised veggies (although some salads like carrots, tomatoes and anything sweetish would be to their liking), give them bits of savoury roast chicken, veal, pork or fish (all of these are essentially white-ish meats). the proper meal's now over. anything after that is unnecessary yet fun : limited amounts of organic chips, organic sweet pastries, organic ice-cream at reasonable intervals, leaving time for digestion so the following proper meal can be looked forward to. avoid candies, ice cream in excess, and anything un-organic! please note that it's the proper sequence in the eating of the meal that is important. as well as addressing their basic animal instincts to sweets first. and don't even imagine that a baby was born with fish & chips "needs" : what a lot of dangerous malarkey that is when you're trying soooo hard to rid your child of toxins. what you need to do is to counteract the toxins (the toxin with which you're killing the first toxin) by giving her nothing but the best organic stuff and try to (re-)educate her palate rather than give in to more toxins and toxic ideas on food "needs" for small children. have you read the labels on those things, by the way? they sound worse than a devil-witch's pharmacy! love, talia"