‘I didn’t finish a single hot meal’: patients say poor hospital food is delaying recovery
Hospital patients are suffering longer recovery times because of the poor quality of the food they are offered, with some going entire stays without eating a single hot meal. Jules Stephenson, 50, from Tyne and Wear, spent nearly eight weeks in hospital and said she did not finish a hot meal during the entire period. “I was very surprised at how bad the food was. It wasn’t appetising,” she said. “I tried the jacket potato and it was cold. Then I tried the chicken potato-topped pie, but the grease immediately put me off. The fish was undercooked. It was the same menu for lunch and dinner every day. Mostly, I had only cheese and crackers unless my family brought me something in.” Ms Stephenson believes her health would have improved sooner with better nutrition. “I didn’t always have an appetite. One nurse even said to me, ‘I feel awful giving you these meals’,” she added.
Other patients describe similar experiences. Laura Abernethy, 33, a writer from London, said the lack of high-quality nutrition had a huge impact on her health when she was in hospital to give birth to her son. “I ended up eating a lot of very stodgy carbohydrate-heavy food with very little nutritious value, and I felt much worse,” she said. Ms Abernethy has an intolerance to tomatoes and said staff were unable to check ingredients because meals “come from a central kitchen”. She relied on jacket potatoes with cheese as a safe option, and was told she could not have both fruit and a low-fat yoghurt with meals. “It seemed mad to restrict healthier items when you’re in hospital trying to get better,” she said.
Patients with specific dietary needs face particular difficulty. Amy Appleby, who has coeliac disease and runs a holistic wellbeing business in London, went hungry when she was in hospital for skin cancer care because there were no gluten-free options. Other patients were given “rubbery” cheese sandwiches made from white bread. Tina Mur, a stoma patient in Scotland, said she loses weight every time she is admitted because hospitals do not provide healthy foods suitable for her condition. “I have seen a lot of food being wasted as it’s very bland, rubbery and reheated too much. The toast is a standing joke in the wards – either only toasted on one side, or soggy and rubbery as it’s covered in foil and left,” she said. She too asks family and friends to bring in food.
Children are also affected. Nikki Knight said her eight-year-old son Toby, who was in hospital twice with leukaemia, found the food unappetising and relied on snacks and takeaways his parents brought in. She said lasagne was dry and burnt, minced beef greasy, mashed potatoes rubbery, and pork dry even though it was in a sauce. On one occasion, staff forgot to bring the food trolley to his ward, she claimed. However, she noted that when Toby was transferred to Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, the experience improved dramatically because the paediatric oncology ward has its own kitchen where children can choose whatever they like.
Millions of pounds of food thrown away each year
The scale of rejected meals is enormous. NHS England figures show that in 2023-24, hospitals in England threw away 10,100 tonnes of food – an 8.5 per cent increase from 9,300 tonnes the previous year. The cost of this waste reached £1.7 million in a single year, up from an estimated £1.5 million in 2022-23 and £1.1 million in 2021‑22. According to the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), every NHS patient produces half a kilogram of waste food each week, and throwing away food wastes water and creates needless greenhouse gases. Some sector evidence suggests the true proportion of food wasted could exceed 60 per cent, and the annual financial loss across the NHS is estimated at £230 million – representing 39 per cent of the total hospital food budget.
Nutrition consultant Kate Arnold, from East Sussex, said: “Food waste is astronomical in the NHS, but is it any wonder when, apart from food safety and calorie content, no thought goes into the quality of food? When you serve ultra-processed beige pulp, we cannot expect clean plates. Decent food not only helps with morale but could help save the NHS money with speedier recoveries and faster patient turnarounds. In 30 years of being a nutritionist, I’ve seen little change, and it’s madness to continue down this path.” She argued that meals should include more vegetables and soups made from scratch.
The problem is not universal. Claire Hill, a kitchen painter from Somerset, spent three nights at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton in October and said her experience was very good. “I was really impressed – there was lots of choice and it was appetising,” she said. The hospital has won awards for its catering, including one for reducing food waste by 16 per cent and achieving cost savings. But such examples remain exceptions. Groups on social media dedicated to NHS food quality are filled with photographs of mushy, sloppy meals or small portions – including a single jacket potato with no filling or garnish offered to one patient’s daughter.
NHS efforts and expert calls for action
NHS England has taken steps to address the problem. Five years ago it launched the NHS Chef programme to raise food standards through training and competitions for caterers. The following year, all NHS organisations were issued with food standards, including targets for reducing waste. In November 2022, legally binding National Standards for Healthcare Food and Drink were published, requiring trusts to have a designated board director responsible for food and to report on compliance. However, an independent review of NHS hospital food in 2020 made eight key recommendations – including upgrading kitchens, enshrining nutrition and sustainability standards in law, and improving monitoring by the Care Quality Commission – but no new funding was allocated to implement them.
About half of UK hospitals outsource food preparation, and experts say meals are better when catering staff are employed directly. A fatal listeria outbreak in 2020, caused by external food contamination, has led some trusts to reconsider outsourcing. Imperial College Healthcare Trust has moved to permanently manage outsourced catering processes internally after a successful trial. Meanwhile, some outsourcing companies such as Sodexo and Bidfood highlight their partnerships with NHS trusts, offering dietitian-designed menus and waste reduction programmes.
Labour pledged in 2018, while in opposition, to introduce “mandatory minimum standards” for hospital food after analysis found huge variations in spending – some trusts spent less than £3 per patient per day while others spent up to £40. The pledge has not yet become law. An NHS spokesperson said: “All patients and staff deserve good quality food from hospitals, and the NHS has been working with partners to ensure food offered is nutritious and varied, while reducing food waste by improving waste monitoring, introducing better systems for patients and staff to order their food, and increasing the quality and standard of meals through the NHS Chef initiative.”
Data from the Office for National Statistics shows that admissions to hospital for malnutrition doubled in the eight years to 2018, and in 2016 malnutrition was a factor in 351 deaths in NHS hospitals in England and Wales. Kate Arnold added: “Food needs to be consistently good to stop the waste.”