Prisoners get healthier and tastier food than most NHS hospital patients, research suggests.
While inmates enjoy balanced diets of carbohydrates and oven-baked meals, the intake of hospital patients is being overlooked, according to experts from Bournemouth University. Researchers, who studied the food eaten by prisoners and those treated on the NHS, found no improvement in health among 40 per cent of patients who were malnourished when they checked into hospital. This is despite more money being spent per person on meals by the NHS.
Professor John Edwards, head of Foodservice and Applied Nutrition Research Group, said: “The food [in prison] is better than what most civilians have.
“There’s a focus on carbohydrates, then there’s the way they prepare the food, it’s very healthy. They don’t add salt and there’s relatively little frying of food — if you have a burger then it goes in the oven.”
Professor Edwards accused hospitals of failing to improve the their patients’s health through dietary requirements. “Hospital patients don’t consume enough,” he said. “If you are using food as a means of treatment then it’s not working.”
Advertisement
Dr Heather Hartwell, a co-researcher, said that illnesses undermined the appetites of patients. But she said that patients may also not be receiving enough monitoring to ensure that they get a sufficient amount of food and fluids.
Meals are likely to be at a set time, when patients may be off having tests or treatment. “Hospital cutbacks are also seen in areas like catering budgets, rather that elsewhere,” she said. “Hospital food services also need to be less fragmented and more joined up.”
Dr Hartwell said that once food was prepared, it generally hangs around waiting for porters to transport it to patients. Then it may be left on wards for a long time until it goes cold. “Ward staff also don’t actually know how much patients are eating because it is domestics who clear the trays away,” she said. “This is an example of fragmentation in hospitals that does not necessarily happen in prisons.”
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “Good quality food for patients improves their health and their overall experience of services. “The majority of patients are satisfied with the food they receive in hospitals, and we are working to improve services further.”