NHS Tayside has rolled out a new menu across most of the hospitals in the region.
For the first time patients will be offered the same choice in their daily meals.
Head of catering Fiona Kinnet took The Courier on a tour of the extensive kitchens at Ninewells Hospital and explained the work that goes in to preparing up to 900 meals a day for patients in Dundee.
At lunchtime the staff were busy plating up a wide choice including sandwiches, fresh minestrone soup, baked potatoes with cottage cheese and rhubarb crumble.
“We’ve just put this new menu in for the whole of Tayside,” said Fiona. “It takes quite a long time to put together and it’s on a three-week cycle.”
While there is one main menu inpatients and day patients can choose from, there are up to 11 variations to cover things like renal menus, texture modified menus and therapeutic diets including caeliac meals.
Each round of meals takes at least an hour and a half to create. But the preparation of the menu starts long before the main kitchen.
Fgures revealed NHS Tayside spends an average of £3.97 on ingredients per patient per day across the board.
All menus are analysed to ensure the meals are giving patients complete nutrition.
A computer system call Nutmeg has been produced for NHS Scotland to calculate the nutritional content of patient meals.
Joyce Thompson, dietetic consultant at NHS Tayside, said: “We put in ingredients for each recipe and it uses a database to calculate the nutritional value. It has the facility to look at an entire menu.
“When patients come into hospital they are assessed in terms of their nutrition risks and dietary requirements.
“The menus are very much informed by what the nutritional needs are and the views and experiences of the staff.”
The staff can help their patients select the meals most appropriate to their needs.
However, Joyce said the most important thing is that the kitchen produces food the patients actually want to eat.
“We’re continually looking to make things better,” she said. “What’s important is that the patients are able to eat the food as well.”
The new menu is available to all Tayside patients apart from in the Perth and Kinross community hospitals.
Members of the Public Partner Network, which is made up of patient groups, organisations and members of the public, have also fed into the menus.THE TASTE TESTIn nearly 30 years I have been lucky enough never to have had to spend a night in hospital, writes Katie Bletcher.
So it was with some trepidation that I went to sample my first ever hospital meal.
Thoughts of “clear soup” were uppermost in my mind as we entered the vast kitchen at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, but I was quickly reassured it is off the menu.
Instead, I was pleasantly surprised when presented with a table full of options to mix and match my lunch from.
After toying with the idea of a baked potato or sandwich, I settled for the minestrone soup.
I sat down to the substantial bowl while NHS Tayside chairman Sandy Watson tucked into the fish and potato pie with peas.
My soup was well flavoured with chunky vegetables and plenty of beans and pasta and I was assured the pie was “very good”.
Thinking it was only lunchtime and I did not want to fall asleep at my desk in the afternoon, I declined the rhubarb crumble and custard and took one of the snack options on the menu a tasty double chocolate chip muffin.
Looking ahead to the evening menu, there were a few options that would take my fancy too were I to be kept in overnight, with the chicken casserole looking particularly good.