Un-Paleo Hospital Food
One of my favourite blogs is Notes from a Hospital Bed, which was started by a journalist during a long stay in a UK hospital. You won't be surprised to hear that he wasn't served Paleo Hospital Food!
The blogger was shocked about the food he was served each day, so took photos and posted them on his blog.
Images by Notes From A Hospital Bed
In hospital good nutrition is obviously paramount to enable patients to recover and regain strength. Hospitals obviously don't serve Paleo food (but hopefully in the not too distant future they will?), but even by Conventional Wisdom the food served in hospital leaves a lot to be desired.
When I had a short stay in hospital a couple of years ago I found it very hard to navigate the food options. Everything on offer was geared towards a low-fat agenda. The other key principle was that all of the food was quick and easy to prepare – and had long shelf lives. This meant everything was pre-packaged along with lots of undesirable ingredients.
I really feel for people in hospital – at the time they need good nutrition the most, they are all too often being given sub-standard food.
If you've been in hospital, what was the food like? Were you able to keep it Paleo? Perhaps one day there will be a Paleo Hospital Food option?
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My husband recently spent 24 hours in hospital. The worst item was the artificial cordial. He said it tasted so awful he couldn’t drink it. He was dehydrated when he arrived home.
On another topic: last night I watched Inside Nature’s Giants – polar bear. The experts were amazed at the amount of fat they ate. Sometimes the bear will eat all the fat and leave the lean meat. Do bears die from heart attacks?
You wouldn’t expect them to serve cordial?!
Interesting about the Polar bears – I’m surprised they’ve not been put on a low-fat diet!
Visiting a friend in hospital I was surprised how unhealthy the food was. I ended up taking in food everytime I vistited.
Your friend was very lucky not to have to rely on the hospital food Penny!
I had a 3 day hospital stay in April. I got my wife to bring me in real food so I could survive 🙂
It sounds like that’s the best option for hospital stays
The same with me, I had a 4 day stay ( I had been warned what to expect foodwise) So I took in a few of my own supplies, to supplement the bad diet.
Good idea Eileen
A friend of ours in in the hospital and on a, ‘heart healthy’ diet. The food and restrictions they have him on are appalling! No meat of anything. He is recovering from a quadruple bypass. I would think meat, especially fattier, well marbled red meat would item #1 on the CAN be eaten list if one is familiar with the dangers of the food pyramid and the health benefits of eating meat. Unfortunately medical, ‘professionals’ seem to be the last in the loop when it comes to doing things that actually save people’s lives and not just take cool photos of their insides.
It’s so sad to hear about the food people are given – at the very time they need good nutrition!
I recently had a baby and experienced the joys of hospital food. I was able to order my food, so managed to get things such as bacon and eggs for breakfast, and the odd tuna or salmon salad for lunch and I could order vegies instead of rice or pasta with casserole type meals for dinner. Though I think it’s safe to assume the quality of these foods was hardly at the better end of the scale! However, the high sugar / high processed / low fat regime on offer – yogurts, juice etc., is really what dominated the menu. I got my husband to bring in plenty of good fats and quality protein so I could better support my body to recover and to prepare to breastfeed.
That’s good you could order food and get a few good options. That’s so sad that so many new mothers are given low-fat food – in hospital! Exactly what you don’t need for breastfeeding…
Hi, I just spent three days in hospital here in New Zealand and I was quite unprepared for the type of food they served.
I am a diabetic following the paleo lifestyle. The first day I was nil-per-mouth (easy when you are paleo :D) until my surgery was cancelled. Then they served me this potato bake thing which I’m sure was delicious but, in an effort to keep my blood sugars under control, I choose not to eat carb-intensive foods including potatoes. So I didn’t eat it. Two hours later I was nil-per-mouth again and went into surgery about 14 hours after that. My first meal after surgery was roast beef, carrots, mashed spud, chicken soup, icecream and jelly. I ate the beef and carrots. So far, so not-ideal-but-manageable.
At one stage during the day I had to fill out a meal form for my next day’s meals, and this is where I had a real problem. There wasn’t a single no-grain or low carb choice in the entire breakfast menu. You could choose between grain bread, toasted or white bread, toasted. And between butter or margarine and a variety of spreads such as marmite and peanut butter. Then you could choose between oatmeal, weetbix or cornflakes. The milk was trim milk and you could also have fruit juice and yoghurt. They put a symbol beside the ‘diabetic’ choices (oatmeal, grain bread, marmite). I was a little stunned – there was another woman in the same room as me who was on an insulin pump because her blood glucose was raging out of control and, seeing that menu, it was obvious to me why!
I looked at the menu for a long time before I wrote a note on it asking for two boiled eggs (I figured they would be quicker and easier for the kitchen to produce than a plate full of yummy bacon and eggs!) The next morning my tray arrived full of oatmeal, trim milk, toast, butter, peanut butter, fruit juice and a sugary yoghurt. I ate the butter. Yay.
My post is getting too long to describe my lunch but I will say I had slightly better luck with it than breakfast. And I was out before dinner, and home to a decent feed of steak! It is not the kitchen’s fault. There is a team of nutritionists that design the menu, and I will be writing a letter to them concerning their breakfast. It is a diabetic’s nightmare, and I’m not surprised most of the diabetic’s end up on insulin pumps.
Anyway, rant over! Love your site 🙂 Kitty =^^=
Thanks Kitty!
That’s incredible that in a hospital they can’t get low-carb meals right?! There must be so many diabetic patients who’d really benefit. Thank goodness you know what works for you – and what doesn’t.
That will be great if you write to them, I’d love to hear how they respond.
I hope you’re feeling better.
I am fully recovered physically, thank you, though I’m still a tad traumatised by that breakfast menu! LOL. I’ll let you know if I get a reply to my letter. Kitty =^^=
Wow! I’m in the hospital now and basically starving because of no food options. Hoping my hubby can bring me food soon. Getting a headache from low blood sugar