Cooking up a treat for the NHS
21 May 2014 04:26 PM
Good food challenge
launched
The skills and
imagination of hospital catering teams across Scotland are to be tested in a
new competition to develop the best Scottish-themed patient meals.
Recognising the
hard work and dedication of catering staff across NHS Scotland, judges will be
looking for healthy meals, using fresh local ingredients, which can be made and
delivered in hospitals.
Local health
boards are being invited to put forward teams that will take part in regional
heats over the summer, before a grand final in the autumn.
Cabinet Secretary
for Health and Wellbeing, Alex Neil said:
“Scotland is
known as a land of food and drink with some of the best natural produce in the
world. Despite this Scotland still has one of the poorest diet-related health
records in the developed world.
“Whatever
the reasons for our dietary habits, the Scottish Government is determined that
our culture must change if we are to prosper as a nation.
“That is why
we are taking a range of steps to help people make better food choices, taking
account of food's healthiness, quality, seasonality and
freshness.
“As part of
this work I want all patients to receive tasty, nutritious food when they are
in hospital.
“We have
already made huge progress in our NHS, with our nutritional database helping
health boards to analyse recipes and ensure meals are nutritionally balanced
and match patients’ individual needs.
“The NHS
Good Food Challenge 2014 is an excellent opportunity for our committed catering
teams to show what they can deliver and to come up with new recipes that are
tasty, healthy and can be shared across the NHS.”
Ian Crichton,
Chief Executive of NHS National Services Scotland said:
“We work
closely with NHS Boards across many fields, to support them to perform more
efficiently and improve standards for patients.
“We work
with NHS Boards to check their performance against the Nutritional Standards,
auditing them every six months. If any issues show up, we send our catering
team to the hospital to help them make the required changes to help them
improve.
“We have
also rolled out a Nutrition Database to enable individual NHS Boards to record
data and information, and produce reports on their patient catering recipes.
This will ensure that the food they offer is nutritionally balanced and
healthy, that recipes can be shared across Scotland and special requirements,
such as textured food, or energy dense meals, can be handled.”
As hospital food
is cooked on a large scale, teams will be expected to produce up to 50 of their
dishes at the same time. The winning menu will be reproduced across
NHSScotland.
Background
In 2008 the
National Catering and Nutrition Specification for Food and Fluid Provision in
Hospitals in Scotland, making Scotland the first part of the UK to produce such
a document.
Since 2008, the
Scottish Government has committed over £1.75 million to support and
improve nutritional care. This includes malnutrition screening of all patients
when they are admitted to hospital, the introduction of nutrition champions in
every NHS Board and protected mealtimes.
Scotland was the
first country in the UK to develop clinical standards for food fluid and
nutritional care in hospitals and to make screening for malnutrition a
mandatory requirement.