Special features

Hospital food policies — progress and improvements

By Richard C. Wilson, BSc, SRD

In 2001 the “Better hospital food” project was launched in England. Although progress has been made, recent reports suggest that there is a still a long way to go. This article, the third in a special feature, describes English, UK and European initiatives to improve the standard of hospital food

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Richard Wilson is director of nutrition and dietetics at King’s College Hospital, London

Hospital food

SUMMARY

Most medicines can be considered to be poisonous foods with a mixture of beneficial and adverse physiological effects. We have less detailed information about the physiological effects of most of the food we eat, but the effects on our health and well-being are undoubtedly profound. The World Health Organization has estimated that, in the developed world, at least 40 per cent of the burden of ill-health is attributable to the fact that the adverse effects of food are outweighing the beneficial effects. Metabolic syndrome with its sequelae of obesity, diabetes and dyslipidaemia, drives the pharmaceutical industry in its efforts to allow society to “have its cake and eat it”. However, the ambition of the western world to alter our metabolism pharmacologically to cope with our disordered diet and inactivity is hugely expensive and probably unsustainable.