Jamie Oliver is doing great things for food in schools, please Jamie, can you do something about food in hospitals too? I spent last weekend in hospital with my 5 year old. Not much fun having a sick child at the best of times, but having to stay in hospital overnight is even worse, no sleep as you’re worrying about your child and although the staff in A&E and the Children’s Ward were totally fantastic and we were really well looked after the big downfall was, you guessed it…….the food………….
Arrived by ambulance at around 12 noon – so no lunch for either of us – not really an issue as small boy was out of it and I was running on adrenaline, once they moved us up to the children’s ward (5pm) they kindly brought me a sandwich, white bread with a slice of chicken breast, an apple and an orange (fabulous, at least there was fruit), plus a packet of 3 custard creams which small boy devoured. Small boy was offered fish fingers, chips and baked beans (yuk!) so was asked if he’d like another veg…..spaghetti hoops. I’m sorry but since when have spaghetti hoops been a vegetable? That drives me completely nuts. Small boy thought this was fantastic as he never gets fish fingers at home and no way would he get away without having veg. No fruit or fruit juice of any kind appeared. Bear in mind this was at 5pm……well, he had one bite of the fish fingers and didn’t like them, left the chips as he always does and ate some of the hoops.
By 7pm he was starving (so was I) and asking for his warm milk – sorry, couldn’t do this, no hot or warm drinks on the ward and children weren’t allowed in the parent’s room where hot drinks were allowed (aaaah!). I found a vending machine (chocolate or crisps only) so we sat down and watched Dr Who with the sound off and ate a chocolate picnic- lovely and healthy.
Breakfast – at least there would be juice – wrong. Cereal and toast, no juice or fruit in sight, even small boy looked amazed when told he couldn’t have any orange juice, we were told that squash was freely available 24 hours in the kitchen. OK, if you knew you were coming into hospital and it was planned then you could bring in supplies but this was an emergency, we hadn’t planned this and why should have to bring in food, hospitals are full of sick people, surely if they are given healthy food then this will aid their recovery or am I missing something here.
A very nice nurse then came around with the lunch and tea time choices. Ho hum…….roast chicken and roast potatoes (yum) with carrots. When I asked what the other veg was I was told that he could have pureed cauliflower instead but it was really for people without teeth. Small boy said he wanted that as well and was told he could only have ONE vegetable either carrots or pureed cauliflower. Pudding was either ice cream, an apple or orange, or tinned fruit, again when we asked if he could have ice cream and tinned fruit, he was told ‘one or the other’. Supper was sandwiches, two of the options with white bread, only one with brown, OK the tuna did have sweetcorn in it but it was the same with the pudding menu. No way is a child going to choose an apple over ice cream, come on, get real, and he can read ‘ice cream’ no problem, you’re not going to have the argument that a child cannot have ice cream when they’re stuck in hospital, bored silly, are you? Well, I’m not.
So out of the full options for the day the maximum portions of fruit and veg he could have had are three, not five which is recommended minimum, but only if he didn’t have ice cream, otherwise it was one portion, the carrots. Come on NHS you need to do something about this…………
Does the NHS really feel that if they feed them unhealthy food then they’ll try and get better quicker to avoid becoming even more ill through malnutrition?
Written by Beverley Glock -
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