A Recommendation

This blog is written by a gentleman currently staying in an unnamed NHS hospital for traction following surgery on his leg - you may have seen it on the BBC's 'health' page today. Although mostly humorous, he is addressing a really very important issue, namely, food.

For many of us, school lunches are a not-too-distant memory. I'm sure some of you had lovely school lunches; mine were uniformly horrific. I'm a slightly fussier-than-average eater, but I don't think that fully accounts for the loss of a stone in weight in a single term when I first started school and began eating food not cooked by my parents. Since then, I have battled - yes, battled - through nearly 14 years at two independent schools, at both of which the lunches provided have been so poor and so clearly lacking in anything resembling either palatability or nutritional value that my parents were forced (much against their will) to provide me with a packed lunch. Now at the lovely Newnham College, provided with such things as ovens and hobs, I am capable of feeding myself adequately throughout term - and Newnham's buttery actually provides food which is edible, even pleasant. Not all Colleges bother to do this, and some of them charge a frankly ridiculous amount for a meagre plateful of nutritionally questionable food of somewhat dubious origin, often with little or no resemblance to the menu posted at the door. Anyway.

If it's bad to be forced to eat poor food while a relatively healthy young person (school age to early 20s) - and it obviously is, just look at that rant and try telling me it's not had a profound effect - then it is many times worse that up to 140,000 people leave hospital with symptoms of malnourishment. How is anyone supposed to recover from surgery, illness, childbirth, mental health problems or whatever other reason they are in hospital in the first place if the food they're eating is depressingly tasteless, nutritionally lacking and - frequently - so far from what they want to eat that most of it is thrown away?

Rant over. But remember: if you're going to get ill and require hospital treatment, don't do it in August or September, and bring tupperware.

Love,
Felicity xxx