How can a nation of foodies feed its patients such slop?

THeY shall fight them from the beds, they shall fight them from under the balding blankets; they might have to take it lying down, but they shall fight on with their phone cameras and what is left of their shattered appetites.

Patients across the UK have this week launched an organic — unlike the food — attack on meals available in NHS hospitals. In a bid to shame bosses into doing something about the poor quality of food being served, they have uploaded photographs of their lunches and dinners, so the world can see them in all their true horror.

The evidence has been shocking, but those of us who have been in hospital recently, or had a relative admitted, are not surprised.

The images chronicle the usual culinary debacles: soggy broccoli, grey peas and charred mince, along with the unspeakable and the uneatable.

Meatballs quite possibly made from dodo meat, roadkill chicken dinners, terrifying day-glo sauces and, in one instance, a few rinds of tomato skin pressed between pulpy slices of factory white bread and optimistically called ‘a sandwich’. The menu of misery makes the worst of school dinners seem like lunch at the Ritz.

You can tell, just by looking at the pictures, that the meals offer all the nutritional value of a wet bandage. There is absolutely nothing there that is going to help patients to get well and feel better.

of course, the parlous state of NHS hospital meals is not a new problem. we have been here before, with government initiatives and assorted celebrity involvements, numerous research projects launched and promises made.

Yet this month, a new mother at a hospital in Stevenage is still given what looks like a plate of dinosaur toes in brine for her postpartum lunch.

The terrible thing is that this is happening in a country that fetishises and glorifies food to an extraordinary degree.

There are glossy cooking programmes on every TV channel. There are star chefs, sexy cooks and enough recipe books to carpet the whole of Great Britain. Food is entertainment, and lack of comprehension is no longer an excuse.

everyone knows that overcooked vegetables have all the nutrition leached out of them, and that raw pastry and soggy bottoms are bad for the health. Yet we still cannot apply good food practice to our health institutions. when they need it most, the old, the infirm and the weak are fed meals which, in the worst cases, appear to be little better than slops.

In January, even Prince Charles was grumbling that Something Should Be Done about the quality of food in hospitals.

He sees food as a ‘ medicine in itself ’ and believes it should be made a ‘clinical priority’.

elsewhere, TV cook and presenter James Martin is the latest celebrity to try to do something positive to help. Along with the Campaign For Better Hospital Food, he has established that those patient meals which are made from scratch and freshly cooked in the hospital’s own kitchen with local ingredients are the best model.

Hardly organic rocket leaf science. But at least this is pointing out the obvious — the solution that makes perfect sense to everyone.

Yet with more and more hospital kitchens closing in the wild belief that it is more cost-effective to buy in pre-prepared meals from outside the NHS, or to outsource meals from another hospital, that model is becoming increasingly rare.

The prevailing wisdom is that it all boils down to cuts and budgets. Yet it is something more than an economic problem: it is a failure of imagination, a crisis of care.

It also shows a lack of appreciation of the old systems that were in place before. while no one is rushed to hospital thinking ‘oh yummy’, meals were once prepared by skilled on-site cooks who were adroit in the particular complexities of mass catering in a public building.

Now, standards have dropped to such an extent that it is deemed oK to serve meals which, as one patient put it this week, look as if they have been regurgitated by other patients. of course, hospitals are not five- star hotels and the priority is getting people well again, not ensuring they enjoy their lunch.

However, food is often very important to the sick — a little bit of brightness to lift the gloom of illness in difficult days.

And it is no surprise that those who have paid taxes all their lives feel they should be treated a little bit better.

Recently, I visited a friend at St Mary’s Hospital in Central London, where meal times were like a zoo as relatives piled in with tinfoil containers and fast-food parcels. The stench of burgers, curries and Lord knows what else was revolting. I dare say it wasn’t very hygienic either.

The entire system is in uproar. The Department of Health is going to publish the recommendations from a new report into hospital food any minute now — but don’t hold your breath for change. The best weapon in the war against soggy broccoli is to keep taking the pictures.