Operation hospital food.

I dont really like James Martin, he is a it fake for me and so I don't really watch any of his shows, I much prefer Jamie Oliver.

Having said that I am sure that those patients are very happy indeed that he is cooking them diner!!

Hello Galen - Just Logged in again!¬ No not really local to Southmead - I live in the Chew Valley not far from Blagdon Lake.

A friend of ours had a full set of dental implants. All in one go. We saw him a week later and he said now he understood the traditional Uk diet of things like cottage pie and rice pudding - perfect for a nation of people with ill fitting false teeth and sore mouths.

I have been away on holiday and I haven't seen it. When I go into our local hospital on Thursday next week for an overnight stay I shall find out! As I am a veggie and like tasty food I am not sure I will be very impressed. Most vegetarian food in pub meals is pretty boring and bland.

At a local sheltered housing scheme where our U3A uses a meeting room, there is advertised a weekly luncheon club which always seems to have a standard boring meat and two veg with a pudding or jelly and ice cream. I suspect most residents are 80 plus, but I wonder if this rather boring menu will change when the upcoming generation of more adventurous eaters needs such facilities!

Over 20 years ago a woman I know who was a Health Visiting lecturer was in hospital. I went to see her and she remarked that she had counted up the calories she had each day (she had the numbers in her head) and that she was on fewer calories than she needed to maintain a steady weight while sitting in bed. I doubt this has changed somehow as they are probably not spending any more on it. In fact there are probably more sandwich type meals being offered ie only one cooked meal per day.
When my son was on the (brand new) oncology ward in Wellington NZ the food was really very good and there was a fridge where patients could help themselves to ice-cream and a day room with a kitchen area where they could make drinks. I used to take things in, like my special fresh ginger and lemon anti nausea brew and he could keep it in the fridge in the day room. Nevertheless the last time he was admitted he wanted to bring him something in to eat - anything that was not associated with being in that ward and feeling queasy.
The other week when MIL was in hospital she had only been in 24 hours. She was dehydrated to a crisp by the time she got home. It finally dawned on me why this happens: you put a jug of water next to a non-ill compos mentis person. Why don't they drink it? a/ they are not used to drinking glasses of water, let alone tepid water, at home. b/the jug is too heavy to lift if you have an arthritic hand. c/ you dont like to ring the bell to ask someone to pour you some water. (6 of one and half a dozen... but even in planes it takes a certain confidence to press the button and summon a staff member to get you water I think)

Are you round here then?

I too was in Southmead Hospital four weeks ago - The food was awful - I didn't eat any of it! Imagine my surprise when watching the local television news a week or so ago to hear they had been given an award by The Soil Association for producing really good, freshly prepared food! I certainly didn't see any of it while I was there!

Fortisip!

Three years ago I was in Sothmead hospital for 3 weeks for a replacement replacement hip op. the food was do terrible I couldn't eat any of it and they had to give me fortis op.

My uncle was in the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother hospital at Margate. He was admitted suffering from malnutrition following self neglect. I had been looking after him at home coaxing him to eat a couple of slices of banana with a cup of tea. In the end hospital admittance was the only answer.

On the first day I visited after lunch. On his tray was a plate containing a huge slab of glutinous steak pie, carrots and potatoes covered with gravy so thick you could pick it up in one piece and a bowl of fruit crumble with custard like the gravy. A nurse turned to me and said, quite aggressively; 'He wont eat his lunch' I just looked at her and said 'If I was in here I wouldn't eat it either. it is disgusting. I got no reply she just walked away.

He was suffering from severe depression and thankfully he was moved to the psychiatric ward where their attitude was more enlightened and he was coaxed to eat yoghourts and other less threatening food until the the treatment for depression started to work and he began to feelhungry again..

When I had my first baby in a Stockport maternity hospital (you know who you are, Stepping Hill - oops!!), they brought me thinly sliced boiled ham covered with gloopy gravy! Pudding was called raspberry mousse - it was a still-frozen cheapo neon pink chemical sludge in a cardboard ring. Just the sort of nourishment a breast-feeding mother needs! I believe it's much the same today. James Martin has quite a job on his hands.

My 1st GC was born in a New York hospital. There was a kitchen where patients/visitors could produce a meal. The microwave was well used.

In Glasgow Royal Infirmary in 1958, when I was 17, after an op, I woke up to that traditional Scottish high tea: pie and chips and baked beans. The following morning the nurses had me out of bed, in the kitchen and poaching eggs. At least the patients got freshly poached eggs that day, even though I was the poacher.

A couple of years ago my husband was in the Chuchill hospital (part of John Radcliffe) in Oxford for a stem cell transplant. The food there was DIRE. What ever he ordered turned up as a dark brown goo. I was fully fit and starving after driving for an hour in below freezing temperatures to see him and I couldn't eat any of it. What hope was there for someone whose stomach had been wrecked by massive doses of chemotherapy. Fortunately the nurses were very good, happy to whip up a milk shake or a bowl of porridge at any time, day or night. Otherwise I think he could have starved in the month he was there.

He said it was a pity James didn't go to the Churchill and I said they were probably one of the hospitals that turned him down.

Years ago most Nightingale wards had a table where the mobile patients could sit and eat their meals together- much more civilised. They were also allowed into the ward kitchen where they could make a cup of tea for themselves and other patients and were encouraged to assist people where they could. My father was in a ward like this for several weeks during the eighties.
Personally I can think of nothing worse than having to eat your meals while sitting in bed if you are able to sit at a table - I never even have a cup of tea in bed.
Scarborough was obviously a success for James Martin - let us hope Birmingham will be the same.

Self catering is the only way FlicketyB my mum recently had quite a long stay in a Newcastle hospital and the food was nothing short of disgusting. She suffers from kidney failure too and has to have a low potassium diet, which meant there was virtually nothing she could eat. If it had not been for the fact that we brought food in for her every day she would have literally starved. Disgraceful. We feed murderers in prison better than patients in hospital !

Over the last ten years I have visited friends and relatives in seven different hospitals and read seven different sets of menus My experience has been that the food, especially the vegetables, are cooked to perdition, there is a very limited selection of fruit and vegetables available, in both number or variety, salads are dire and sandwiches a bit worse

The conclusion I have come to is that if ever I am in hospital I am going self-catering with friends and family bringing in my meals. I have it all sorted so it will cause minimal effort. A big bowl of fruit by my bedside, possibly toped up with hospital toast and fruit juice, for breakfast, a ready salad from a supermarket for lunch and sandwiches from the same source for supper. I will be taking my own teabags, fruit and tea and avoiding the coffee.

He needs to get in sunderland their food is awfull ,no menu there .I did watch james and think it will be hard to get things changed the way he wants x

I could hear it as I was scrubbing down the kitchen this morning. It's time someone took hospital food in hand. My 'favourite' was a dish of pasta/cauliflower bake. You really couldn't tell which was which - the whole thing had been cooked to death.

He did the same thing at a hospital in Scarborough (I think) and the resulting TV programme was shown last year. More power to his elbow – and his wooden spoon – I say.