Dispatches: The Truth About Hospital Food

20 February 2011

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Loyd Grossman calls for NHS catering to be taken seriously or patients will continue to suffer

In an interview to be broadcast tomorrow on Channel 4's Dispatches (Monday 21st February at 8pm) Loyd Grossman calls for NHS catering to be taken seriously and reveals his frustration at the lack of political willpower to drive through changes.

"Someone at the top has got to take the issue of food seriously or else patients will continue to suffer unnecessarily"; says Mr Grossman.

In 2000 Mr Grossman was appointed to head up the £40 million project to improve the quality of food served in NHS hospitals.    But after five years of struggle he gave up in frustration at the lack of political power behind the drive to improve NHS catering.

As part of a wider investigation into hospital food industry, Dispatches reporter Mark Sparrow asked Lyod Grossman about his time working to improve the quality of food served in NHS hospitals and why he eventually give up the role. 

"I don't think anything made me snap. It was really just an accumulation of five years of frustration, knowing that it should be done, knowing that it could be done, yet, looking all around me and finding all sorts of impediments. Anytime you wanted to make a basic suggestion about improving hospital catering, ah well its not evidence based enough there was kind of a prejudice against common sense, the kind of common sense that's been part of patient care since Hippocrates", he says.   

"It seemed so obvious and it still seems so obvious that if you give patients better food they will be happier, they will heal more quickly, its just a basic it seems to me, it should be a basic element of decent humane treatment of people who are ill.", he adds. 

When asked who he thought was blocking improvements to hospital food Mr Grossman says: "There are some very brilliant, very talented very dedicated people there but the system doesn't always work to the benefit of the patients. The system of political control is very difficult.  During the time that I was working with the NHS, say over a period of 5 years, I reported to five different ministers. Every time a new minister arrives, there's a new mountain to climb.  They have to be educated about it, they have to be, convinced that it's a good idea etc etc.  So the high ministerial turnover, made it very difficult to push through a programme when you really need and the thing I bitterly regret, is that from the beginning I was not ruthless enough to insist that there was complete political power behind the drive to improve NHS catering."

His advice to the next person that is appointed to tackle NHS catering is to get ownership from the top.

"Whom ever does this in future its important to get ownership right from the top, and to make sure that that good food is at the centre and my mantra was, my mantra that was never listened to was...  Don't tell me you have a good hospital unless you have good food", he says.   

The NHS spends around half a billion pounds on catering every year.    

Dispatches: The Truth About Hospital Food reveals the shocking truth about catering in the NHS.

Reporter Mark Sparrow spent ten weeks in traction in hospital, forced to rely on NHS food. The quality of his meals were so bad that he set up a blog - and began to record his experiences. He photographed and filmed dozens of meals. Since he has been released he has set out to discover whether what his experience was a one-off or symptomatic of a deeper problem.

Sparrow meets young people with cystic fibrosis, whose survival depends on getting the right diet. They claim that the NHS is failing them.  One of our case studies parent take her son out of hospital to local pubs and restaurants to make sure that he eats properly and obtain the necessary calorie content.

Mark also meets the relatives of elderly people who have been served revolting food - and then given no help eating it. They claim that NHS staff have falsified records to show that patients have consumed meals where, in reality, the food was untouched. Mark finds that a national network of patients groups is springing up to campaign against the mistreatment of the elderly.

Mark goes in search of solutions - visiting hospitals that succeed in feeding patients on a limited budget. He explores whether introducing more competition would drive up standards.

These findings will be broadcast in Dispatches: The Truth About Hospital Food on Monday 21 February at 8pm on Channel 4.

Notes to Editors:

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