A relative of a recently hospitalized man in Winnipeg says patients are served unappetizing meals and wonders if they meet the nutritional needs of people recovering from illness or injury.
Thomas Rempel-Ong’s brother-in-law broke his femur over the long weekend in August and was sent to the Winnipeg Health Sciences Center for immediate surgery.
Rempel-Ong soon began getting photos of the unappealing meals her brother-in-law was served as he tried to recover after his surgery.
“The diplomatic response was that everything I was trying to eat was completely bland, it had no flavor,” Rempel-Ong said.
“It looked unappetizing and almost as if it had been made by the lowest bidder.”
What stood out in the photos was the small portion sizes, the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables and how unpleasant the food looked on the plate, he said.
A Manitoba Shared Health spokesperson said HSC’s meal plan costs $26 per day per patient, a price that includes meals, snacks, supplies and wages.
HSC’s food services department “uses nutrition specifications and tests when sourcing food to meet high-quality standards,” the provincial health organization’s spokesperson wrote in a statement to CBC.
Menus offer fruits and vegetables throughout the day, “with additional availability of fresh fruits and salads upon request,” the statement says.
Meals ‘didn’t help’ recovery
Rempel-Ong researched the hospital’s food policies and found that adult patients are supposed to get a minimum of 1,800 calories per day.
According to Shared Health, the HSC’s meal plan follows the recommendations of clinical dieticians at the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, based on sources such as Canada’s Dietary Guide and “literary evidence.”
“Based on the evidence, the expert review group recommended providing a minimum of 1,800 calories per day based on a weekly average,” the Shared Health spokesperson said.
Based on the photos he saw, Rempel-Ong wondered if that was how many calories his brother-in-law was being served.
“Trying to start recovering from that major injury and putting on, I would say, a staple diet completely out of the blue definitely didn’t help his recovery,” he said.
“I just can’t believe this is acceptable… It almost feels like we’re putting patients, for lack of a better term, on a starvation diet.”
Rempel-Ong says her brother-in-law checked out of the hospital on his own a week later, choosing to recover from surgery at home outside Winnipeg, where he wouldn’t have to rely on hospital meals.
Hospital food ‘notoriously unloved’
Efforts have been made to make changes to meals in hospitals across the country, including a push to include traditional and wild foods in meal plans.
The problem is that food is often not considered part of health care, “when it really is,” said Hayley Lapalme, co-executive director of Nourish Leadership.
His nonprofit works with public and private care providers in British Columbia, Quebec and Ontario, but none in Manitoba at this time, to create meal plans that consider how food can be part of a care plan. Comprehensive for patients.
“Unfortunately, I think hospital food is not loved across the country. But I don’t really see it as an isolated or individual failure of a facility or staff there, it’s really a systemic failure in the tray,” Lapalme said. .
“And I think it’s one that goes back to a mindset that food is an aid to care in a health care setting.”
Rempel-Ong says her brother-in-law followed a low-sodium diet to reduce the risk of swelling after surgery, but says that limit shouldn’t mean the food served is bland and unpleasant.
“You can still have a complete and healthy diet without salt,” he said.
To help her brother-in-law recover, Rempel-Ong left behind a care package, which included high-protein snacks, sparkling water and no-salt-added condiments to make his hospital meals more palatable, but notes some patients might not be in a position to supplement your diet.
Nourish Leadership says that when healthcare facilities provide more appealing and flavorful food, patients are not only happier, they spend less time in the hospital.
“We know that a patient in a hospital who is malnourished is going to stay … two or three days longer than a well-nourished patient,” Lapalme said.
“They will cost the entire system $2,000 more in that one incident alone.”
Bad food can also contribute to waste, Laplame said.
“There ends up being 40 percent of food in hospitals…and long-term care goes to waste, contributing to already huge greenhouse gas emissions from health care.”
A relative of a man recently hospitalized in Winnipeg says patients are served unappetizing meals and wonders if they meet the nutritional needs of people recovering from illness or injury.
