Children receiving hospital treatment are being given meals containing “shocking” amounts of salt, sugar and saturated fat, damning new research into the quality of NHS food shows.
Many of the dishes served to child patients are so unhealthy that senior doctors are calling for minimum nutritional standards to be imposed on hospitals similar to those that already apply in schools.
The findings are revealed in a study carried out by the food campaign group Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash), which is headed by an expert in cardiovascular medicine. They analysed the nutritional content of 451 main meals, snacks and desserts served to children in hospitals in England and found that:
■ Almost half the main meals, 85 of 189, contained so much salt or saturated fat that they would be deemed too unhealthy to be offered to school pupils.
■ Those high levels of both salt and saturated fat also meant 30% of all the 451 dishes would be classed “red” under the traffic-light food labelling system used by some major supermarkets.
■ One hospital meal, a chicken tikka massala and rice, contained 14 times more salt and 8.5 times the amount of saturated fat of a chicken and vegetable balti and rice school lunch.
■ A lasagne had almost six times the level of salt as one served in schools – 3.2 grams compared to 0.57g.
Other notably unhealthy dishes included a pizza that had almost twice the level of salt allowed in schools, and a sticky toffee sponge pudding with six times more saturated fat and double the amount of sugar permitted under the nutritional standards introduced in England after the 2005 TV series Jamie’s School Dinners.
The legal limit for salt in a school lunch is 1.785g. But, apart from the lasagne (3.2g) and pizza, other dishes well over that threshold included potato-topped bacon pie (2.92g), vegetarian sausages in gravy (2.90g) and ravioli au gratin (2.87g).
Similarly, while school canteens can put no more than 7.9g of saturated fat into meals, hospitals were found to be serving vegetable crumble (17g), lasagne (16g) and macaroni cheese (14.5g). Saturated fats have been linked to an increased risk of obesity and heart disease.
Desserts were a problem, too. Eighty-two contained more sugar than the 18.9g allowed in schools, including treacle tarts containing up to 58.2g and syrup sponge with 49g. “When such progress has been made on what pupils are eating in school, it is shocking that children in hospitals are being ignored,” said Professor Graham MacGregor, Cash’s chairman. He is the country’s leading expert on the damage dietary salt does to health by causing heart attacks and strokes, and is professor of cardiovascular medicine at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine in London.
“With everything we know about the risk of children developing high blood pressure and diet-related diseases such as obesity, it is vital to keep their consumption of salt and saturated fat as low as possible while still keeping dishes appetising,” he added.
Professor Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, criticised the situation as “unacceptable” and said hospitals were failing in their duty to promote healthy lifestyles, as well as effective medical treatment, by offering children such poor fare: “I was in hospital recently myself and I can’t say the food was very appetising. I’m even more perplexed that these meals intended for children contain far more salt, sugar and saturated fat than would be allowed in our schools. It’s unacceptable.”
He added: “If we have a standard that we think is right for children in schools, then it must be even more right for children who are in hospital, because we want to promote good health as well as treating illness. The health service should not be lagging behind the education system in this.”
The Department of Health expressed unease at what Cash found. “We are concerned about the findings of this study,” a spokesman said. “While it is the responsibility of individual hospitals to decide what food to provide, we expect patients to be fully informed about the contents of their food and to have a range of options presented to them. We recognise the importance of good-quality food for patients of all ages, both in terms of improving their health and in relation to their overall experience of services.”
The 451 dishes that Cash analysed were provided by three main manufacturers of hospital food: Apetito, Anglia Crown and MediRest. The identities of the hospitals were not disclosed.
The Guardian UK