Asked about Heston Blumenthal's attempts to revive the fortunes of Little Chef earlier this year, I opined that it was a national institution. "Mind you," I added, "So is Broadmoor and I wouldn't want to go there for dinner either."
Cheap gag, but it contains a basic truth: nobody who has to stay in hospital ever talks warmly about the food they will be offered, even when it's fine. It is one of the most thankless elements of hospital catering. Get it right and nobody will mention it; get it wrong and it will be shouted about from the rooftops. The conventional wisdom in Britain is that there is a lot of rooftop shouting required when it comes to hospital food. The question I am now asking, in another one of our exercises in open source journalism, is whether it's justified.
A little over two years ago I wrote a large piece for Observer Food Monthly on the state of food in hospitals, arguing that while there was a lot of good practice out there, there were also a lot of bad stuff too.
The big argument that went on was not merely over the items on the plate, but over delivery. It's great if you can make appealing and palatable dishes which suit the appetite post-operatively, but it's all worthless if you aren't able to feed yourself and there's nobody there to help you. Much of the talk was about protected meal times, and red tray schemes to point up who needed assistance.
On 23 April the Hospital Caterers Association are meeting in Glasgow for their annual conference and I have been asked to reinvestigate the state of hospital catering for a speech I will be giving there. I am also considering whether the subject deserves another article. Obviously I am talking to a lot of the key parties involved from the HCA itself, through the BMA to dieticians and politicians.
But what I really need is anecdote. So I am asking you to share with us your experiences of hospital food. The problem with such a call is that the respondents tend to be self-selecting in just one direction which is to say towards the bad. Now obviously I want to hear about bad hospital food experiences. But I would very much like to hear not just about the exceptional or good but also – and we hear very little about this – the simply adequate.
The NHS is free at the point of demand. We have the right to expect the very best medical care available, but I do wonder whether some of our expectations of such services are unreasonable. Perhaps, in most situations, adequate – by which I mean palatable, nutritious, but neither brilliant nor awful – is what we really have the right to expect. I want as wide a set of experiences as possible.
And, of course I would love to hear informed opinion on where you think the whole system has gone wrong or right. Obviously we want you to post here, but if some of the stories feel too personal (or too savage an indictment of an individual institution) feel free to email me at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk.
