Celebrated hospitals rapped for poor meals

They might give the best care available anywhere but London's teaching hospitals were rapped yesterday for providing the worst fare. Some of the top medical institutions in the country ranked bottom of the latest government league table for the quality of their hospital food.

Eight of the 15 hospitals nationwide given a red light for their low culinary standards in the table published yesterday are in the capital and five of them are among the best- known names in the NHS. They are the Royal Free hospital, the Hammersmith, King's College, St George's and the Middlesex.

Cold mince with mashed potato was more likely to figure on patient menus in these institutions than navarin of lamb with couscous, one of several dishes developed for the NHS two years ago under the leadership of Loyd Grossman, the television chef asked to revamp hospital catering.

The most consistently appetising food was served up by smaller hospitals in Devon, Wiltshire and south Tyneside. Almost 20 local and cottage hospitals in Devon earned the coveted green light, the NHS equivalent of a Michelin star.

St Bartholomew's and St Thomas' hospitals both earned green lights, proving that London hospital chefs are not devoid of talent.

Inspectors visited most of the 687 hospitals in England listed in the tables and ranked them on eight measures including presentation, quality, choice, timing and service. Of the total, 118 were judged "good" (green light), 554 "acceptable" (amber) and 15 "poor" (red). The initiative is the first attempt to assess the standard of hospital catering since the launch of the Better Food Panel chaired by Mr Grossman in 2001.

London hospitals blamed the age of their buildings, their geographical spread and outdated equipment for their poor performance. The Royal Free and the Middlesex both said old trolleys meant food was delivered to patients cold but these were being replaced. The Royal Free said it was introducing a new service next month at a cost of £250,000, which would see plastic trays replaced with china crockery.

Mr Grossman developed a set of menus intended to appeal to patients' palates as part of a £40m drive to raise catering standards over four years. But about a quarter of hospitals in England rejected them as too posh. They included dishes such as butter bean and bacon soup, herby chicken with pasta and braised lamb in cider with parsley dumplings.

Some hospitals, with a budget of about £2 per person per day for three meals plus tea and coffee, complained the dishes were too expensive. Others claimed the campaign would consign to the past the bland, overcooked and cold food that was the NHS staple diet.

Yesterday Mr Grossman, on a visit to Newham general hospital in east London, which scored amber in the table, said he was delighted that the league table provided a "clear baseline" against which progress could be measured. Congratulating those who had brought standards up to an acceptable level, he added: "I have always said we cannot achieve all the changes required overnight and there is still more to do."

But in a book published in December, Mr Grossman said the failure of the NHS to offer tasty and nutritious meals to patients was "damaging our society" and that the crucial role of food in recovery had been ignored.

Separate tables published yesterday for hospital cleanliness showed standards had improved, the Department of Health said. Nearly 60 per cent of hospitals were judged good (green) with the remainder rated acceptable (amber). No hospital was classed as poor.

Spongy, bland and big in beige: the menu lingers on

By Kate Watson-Smyth

The beige is what I remember. I might have been in a drug-induced haze after giving birth at the Royal Free, but I can still recall that everything they gave me to eat was a uniform beige colour. And the same spongy texture.

How do they get fish to taste like chicken? And apples to taste like pears? And why do they serve mashed potato with chips? And more to the point why did I eat it? Every morning a cheery orderly would come round with a list of the day's choices, although I use the term loosely. These have to take into account the vegetarian option, the gluten-free and/or kosher option and the whatever-was-left-over-from-yesterday-that-we've-turned-into-a-stew option. Which means you are basically left with the boiled chicken and lumpy mash option followed by the non-optional jam roly poly and lumpy custard.

Ten years of boarding school ought to have inured me to the horrors of institutional food but what is really surprising is that things haven't improved in all that time.

After all, Egon Ronay has turned his attentions to motorway food and even airline fare isn't so bad these days – and these meals are the ones for healthy people.

Surely a hospital is the one place where catering staff should make an effort to produce healthy, balanced grub. I was only there for three days and after a nutritionally indulgent pregnancy I was unlikely to fade away in that time but many patients do need good food to help them get back on their feet. Ill people require more than the odd bunch of grapes from a well-meaning relative if they are to build up their strength again.

As a friend who was admitted to the Royal Free two weeks before me quietly observed: "I wouldn't say it was outstandingly foul but it certainly didn't do anything to help speed my recovery."

Faring badly

Hospitals with the worst food:

Royal Free, London
Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear, London
Middlesex, London
Whipps Cross, Essex
Sally Sherman Nursing Home, Newham, London
Hammersmith, London
Queen Charlotte and Chelsea, London
King's College, London
St George's, London
Kingston, Kingston, Surrey
Queen Mary's, Sidcup, Kent
North Hampshire, Basingstoke
Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, Oxford
Battle, Berkshire
Good Hope, Sutton Coldfield