In Viola Di Grado’s article on delicious hospital food (In Italy we live to eat. But tasty NHS meals put our bland hospital food to shame, May 21), I’d like to know which London hospital she was in so I could tell her can ask go there if i need hospital treatment in future. Recently I spent three days in a large teaching hospital in London, awaiting transfer to another hospital to have a pacemaker inserted. On the first day, I was presented with a crumpled sheet of paper with about six dinner choices typed on it. I chose chicken tikka masala. What I got was something that looked like a gray cow pie. I had no idea what it was, and when I asked when my plate was picked up, I was told it was chicken pot pie.
On the second day I again opted for the chicken tikka masala and had breakfast all day. On the third day, after making the same choice, I got fish pie. None of these meals were memorable.
Mike Cantor
London
I read Viola Di Grado’s article with disbelief. I have just spent over four weeks in an NHS hospital and my main course experience there was nothing like the range and quality of food she describes. Many of the sweets and desserts were of good quality, especially those from sealed containers, such as yoghurt, but the same could not be said for the main courses. Indeed, it could be taken as a compliment to describe them as terrible.
Like Viola with her family food, I also closed my eyes and ate it as a compromise to survive. No one expects hospital food to be of the highest quality, but it should be edible and look vaguely appetizing. I would expect good nutrition to be an important aid in a patient’s recovery.
Alan Beamish
Thirlby, North Yorkshire