Madam, - One Dublin hospital brochure welcoming patients announces that "the Catering Department strives to promote healthy eating and you will be provided with a choice of options daily. . . a Catering Manager will visit you regularly during your hospital stay".
A catering employee did visit my ward shortly after my arrival at an orthopaedic hospital and spoke for a few seconds to each patient. And that was it. After surgery, I was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital. I found the waste of food in both places offensive both morally - given the constant reports of hunger and starvation in other countries - and economically.
For example, in one of the hospitals, a thick vegetable soup was served daily at llam. "Lunch" (the heaviest meal) followed at noon. "Dessert" was usually some kind of pudding and custard.
The problem is not the food itself, which is wholesome enough, but in preparation and presentation. People who have just had major surgery seldom need or want huge, unappetising helpings. Most plates are piled with very large portions, much of which are often left untouched. Just the sight of a big plate of lasagne, cold chips and carrot sticks, for instance, was an instant appetite eliminator for me. My pleas for smaller portions were in vain.
Left-overs are slopped into general rubbish bins along with unopened butter, margarine and jam packages, dirty serviettes, plastic pill-holders, etc.
Fourteen years ago, during a three-week stay at St Michael's
Hospital in Dun Laoghaire, I made a similar complaint about food
waste. Now I worry that the same culture of waste continues to be
repeated in every ward across the country in every Irish hospital
while taxpayers pay the bills, the HSE complains about costs and
countless people elsewhere are suffering and dying from famine. -
Yours, etc,
YVONNE STEWART,
Clarinda Close,
Dun Laoghaire,
Co Dublin.