Hospital food: the good, the bad, and the what do you think?

I recently drove down to Ocala (forty miles south of where I am here in Gainesville, Florida) to visit an elderly aunt having a few days' stay in a hospital there for a minor problem.

While visiting Aunt Doris, I ate a couple of times in the hospital cafeteria there. My assessment of the food that I had there was that it wasn't bad at all.

And as I was eating I got to thinking about the past times when I myself had had a meal in a hospital, either as patient or visitor, and I realized that my own culinary experiences with hospital food in the past have been largely positive.

But this seems to be in contrast with a kind of general perception on the web that hospital food is usually bad. If you websearch something like

hospital food

the majority of hits seem to be mostly of a negative nature, that hospital food is really pretty bad and needs to be improved.

I also found, for one thing, that there doesn't seem to be any national supervising agency in charge of inspecting hospital food services in particular. Such functions seem to be the responsibility of the individual hospitals, local health boards, etc.

Same for evaluating food quality. To the best of my knowledge, no one is giving out 3, 4 or 5 stars (or no stars) to individual hospital cafeterias.

But, as noted, there do seem to be a pretty fair number of websites out there complaining about hospital food.

And after reading a number of them, I could see that a pattern in the complaints that consisted of two problems in particular: (1) a local food service arrangement (which may not have been all that bad) becomes too expensive, and gets replaced by bringing in a commercial food provider (by setting up a "food court": McDonald's, Wendy's, Chick-fil-A, etc.): money is saved, but quality of food is quite possibly reduced, and (2) inertia: reluctance of hospital leadership to make changes in a food system that is possibly below expectations, but at the same time "isn't broken," so they do nothing.

Another serious issue I found mentioned was the concern of physicians that pre-processed food given to patients from outside vendors might in some cases actually be harmful to some patients. Such as excess salt in meals for hypertension patients, or potassium in those meals for cardiac patients. The physicians were concerned that while it might be possible for a local food preparer to control this sort of food problem, it might not be possible to do so for food coming in from the outside.

Example of an article critical of hospital food:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ranking-hospital-food-the_b_9178416

Article that's maybe a little more objective (but still has criticisms):

https://www.agingcare.com/articles/hospital-food-bad-or-good-for-you-152042.htm

(NOTE: I also read that it gets complicated. Some hospitals have in-house food preparation for patients, but food courts for visitors; some have outside vendors provide all food; some have in-house prepared food for everybody. Again, cost appears to be the big driver here, according to many articles).

But as for the quality of food itself, what has been your own food experience during your past hospital stays, either as patient or visitor? On the whole good, or bad, in most cases? And any suggestions for making it better?

Feel free to check one of the survey boxes above, and/or post below what you think hospitals might be able to do to make their food services better.

My little sister just passed away from Pancreatic Cancer. I'm not going to brag about the meals at Ohio State. I will say that they did offer a $5 voucher to use for each meal at their upscale restaurant and at the cafeteria to use if you could not get used to eating on the untimely hospital schedule.

I haven't eaten at a hospital cafeteria for a long time, so I really can't say much about it. I vaguely remember being at some kind of all day meeting in a hospital meeting room some years ago, and we ate in the cafeteria. I think in that case the food was decent--I remember filling a plate and paying for it by weight.

The times I've been an in patient, the food was not great....but how can you have anything that tastes good when you're on a "soft" diet? When I had my RALP, I had been without food of any kind for 24 hours when breakfast showed up, and the guy brought me cream of wheat. And apple juice. He did give me several tubs of the margarine, which helped. He told me he'd bring me something good for lunch--and he did. Meat loaf, steamed carrots, mashed potatoes and gravy. It was pretty good, as I recall.

I had an eye exam at the VA hospital a few years ago. My eyes were fine other than the usual eyeglass prescription, but they asked me if I would enroll in a glaucoma study as part of the control group. I had to go back two or three times to stare at a screen and identify flashes of light. Though there was no payment for being in the study, they would give me vouchers for the cafeteria. On one visit I'd already had breakfast and didn't yet want lunch. So on the way out I found another vet in the lobby - younger than me, probably Iraq or Afghanistan -- and gave him my free lunch voucher. He was really happy to get it, so the food can't be that bad.
Jim

I started eating LIVER at the age of fifteen.....due to being starved and in the hospital. Toss some ketchup on it and it tastes just like chicken. AND I actually like chicken liver more than I do beef liver.

I suspect the main issue with hospital room food, is that most of the things we list as 'taste good' are bad for us, and if you're an inpatient, their goal is to keep you alive, not make you feel good. Your diet in the hospital is defined as that which is supposed to be good for you.

As a nearly lifelong vegetarian at this point in my life, I pretty much quit eating out many decades ago, particularly when I moved to Montana. When I do have to eat out, I opt for veggie side dishes or a salad bar. As long as the veggies are not overcooked and the salad is fresh it’s fine with me.

My experience with hospital food is limited to when I was in overnight for RALP and I don’t remember it as a plus or minus. As for hospital cafeteria food, for quite a few years I was co-director for our city’s marathon and we’d have our planning meetings at the local hospital since a couple of our committee members worked there. We’d meet over lunch at the cafeteria. I walked through the food line once and looked at the offerings but was put off by the smell of everything and just ate my lunch at home later.