Anytime I have been in hospital, which hasn't been too frequent TG, I have been amazed at the food that is served up there.
People are normally in hospital because they are sick. Often diet and lifestyle are a contributory factor to their being there in the first place. What do they get to eat in hospital, food that put them there in the first place - fries, chips, butter and food that is full of fats etc. I suppose that it's cheap and easy to cook.
I remember looking at a BBC/ITV programme about food in hospitals in the UK a couple of years ago. There they were given a budget of about 1.50 - 2.00 stg., per day, per patient, to spend on the ingredients for a meal. Naturally they were very badly fed. I wouldn't be too surprised if the same is true here in Ireland.
Perhaps the HSE and the administrators should take a look at this article.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hospitals-give-healthy-food-more-operating-room?siteid=nwhpf
From what I have heard a lot more is spent on feeding our involuntary inmates in the Joy and other places of detention. I think they rioted a few times because they were unhappy with the variety of food they were being served. Tell me, who would you rather see served proper food. It's a bit too late now as the Dail is on holidays, but a parliamentary question to both the Minister for Health and the Minister for Justice asking for the cost of food (not including labour and staff costs) per patient/prisoner, per day, might have provided some valuable insight into who we, as a society, regard as the most important and deserving
On a similar line, I was attending Temple St A&E a few years ago with my child. At that time, the only drinks available there were soft fizzy drinks from a vending machine. This machine was helpfully located next to a sweet vending machine. I think this may have changed and you can now buy bottled water from another machine, but the old ones are still there.
Surely in this day and age we should ban unhealthy fizzy drinks from hospitals. We should be offering free water and milk or fruit drinks to those children and their parents attending out patients. Vending machines selling sweets should be banned from hospitals.
Maybe the contract with the suppliers of the fizzy drinks and sweets were too lucrative for the hospital to refuse. Perhaps they are signed into long term contracts. After all, we have to remember that we had the unbelievable situation where the only loss making car park provided by the State, and run by the private sector, was located in Beaumont Hospital. They had to pay the private operator to run it for them in addition to the private company collecting and keeping all the revenue from hospital patients and visitors car parks.
Rant over
Murt
Mods. Pl move to LOS. Posted in the wrong forun
People are normally in hospital because they are sick. Often diet and lifestyle are a contributory factor to their being there in the first place. What do they get to eat in hospital, food that put them there in the first place - fries, chips, butter and food that is full of fats etc. I suppose that it's cheap and easy to cook.
I remember looking at a BBC/ITV programme about food in hospitals in the UK a couple of years ago. There they were given a budget of about 1.50 - 2.00 stg., per day, per patient, to spend on the ingredients for a meal. Naturally they were very badly fed. I wouldn't be too surprised if the same is true here in Ireland.
Perhaps the HSE and the administrators should take a look at this article.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hospitals-give-healthy-food-more-operating-room?siteid=nwhpf
From what I have heard a lot more is spent on feeding our involuntary inmates in the Joy and other places of detention. I think they rioted a few times because they were unhappy with the variety of food they were being served. Tell me, who would you rather see served proper food. It's a bit too late now as the Dail is on holidays, but a parliamentary question to both the Minister for Health and the Minister for Justice asking for the cost of food (not including labour and staff costs) per patient/prisoner, per day, might have provided some valuable insight into who we, as a society, regard as the most important and deserving
On a similar line, I was attending Temple St A&E a few years ago with my child. At that time, the only drinks available there were soft fizzy drinks from a vending machine. This machine was helpfully located next to a sweet vending machine. I think this may have changed and you can now buy bottled water from another machine, but the old ones are still there.
Surely in this day and age we should ban unhealthy fizzy drinks from hospitals. We should be offering free water and milk or fruit drinks to those children and their parents attending out patients. Vending machines selling sweets should be banned from hospitals.
Maybe the contract with the suppliers of the fizzy drinks and sweets were too lucrative for the hospital to refuse. Perhaps they are signed into long term contracts. After all, we have to remember that we had the unbelievable situation where the only loss making car park provided by the State, and run by the private sector, was located in Beaumont Hospital. They had to pay the private operator to run it for them in addition to the private company collecting and keeping all the revenue from hospital patients and visitors car parks.
Rant over
Murt
Mods. Pl move to LOS. Posted in the wrong forun
