Journalist and broadcaster Loyd Grossman and celebrity chefs Albert Roux and John Benson-Smith are joining calls led by a coalition of 89 organisations for the introduction of legally binding hospital food standards.
They have added their support to a report published today titled: Twenty Years of Hospital Food Failure: Why We Need Mandatory Standards, Not More Ineffective Voluntary Initiatives.
Alex Jackson, coordinator of the Campaign for Better Hospital Food, said: “This report must serve as a lesson to Jeremy Hunt that simply publishing recommendations for the improvement of hospital food isn’t good enough, as every one of his predecessors in the last 20 years has found out.
“It’s time for the government to take effective action by introducing mandatory standards for patient meals.”
The Campaign for Better Hospital has been organised by Sustain, the alliance for better food and farming.
The report says the Government has wasted more than £54m on failed attempts to improve patient meals since 1992.
It found that between 1992 and 2013 the Government had introduced 21 failed voluntary initiatives to improve hospital food, costing more than £54m of taxpayers’ money - enough to pay for 34 new hospital kitchens.
In that time Loyd Grossman and five different celebrity chefs have been appointed to lead these voluntary initiatives: Albert Roux, John Benson-Smith, Mark Hix, Anton Edelmann and Heston Blumenthal.
Jackson said in that time the Government had ignored at least 14 warnings from Government advisers, MPs, commercial caterers, and health, environmental and animal welfare organisations that voluntary initiatives to improve hospital food were failing.
The report concludes that these initiatives failed because they relied on hospitals to voluntarily adopt their recommendations, rather than being made compulsory like nutritional standards introduced for school food.
Grossman, who led the Government’s Better Hospital Food initiative between 2001 and 2006, said: “Serving fresh and nutritious hospital food is vital to improving patient health, and to raising morale – among NHS staff, patients and their families.
“My team and I worked hard for five years to improve patient meals but progress was much slower than we would have liked. Although we had a number of successes, we did not achieve the transformation which we had hoped for and which patients deserve.
“While I could see what needed to be done and what could be done, our efforts were hampered by a lack of political will.
“There has not yet been a noticeable change in the way hospital food is produced, prepared, cooked and served. I welcome the publication of this report and hope that it prompts government to take a new and effective approach to improving hospital food, including by requiring it to meet mandatory standards.”