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Rumour has it: hospital food is gross and not nutritional.
We’ve decided to scrape the plate clean and figure out what patients eat while staying at the Kelowna General Hospital.
"The food is not bad. It's a little bland, but they give us salt and stuff. So far, it's like eating at home. Some stuff you like, some stuff you don't," Kathleen Miller told KelownaNow.
Miller is currently staying at the Kelowna General Hospital.
She said she understands that there’s this unspoken rule that hospital doesn’t taste great, but she said it’s just fine.
"In general, we're working to dispel that myth. I seldom watch a television show where there is a hospital involved where there isn't some comment about the food," said Alan Davies, corporate director of support and services for Interior Health.
A day in the life for a Kelowna hospital patient looks a little like this:
Breakfast:
In the morning, or the evening before, a food services employee will contact each patient to ask what they’d like for breakfast.
A breakfast cart is rolled around to each room in the morning full of oatmeal, toast, eggs and drinks. The cart attendant will go into the patient’s room, ask again what they’d like and then go prepare it and bring it right back into the room.
This is called the "just in time" service system.
On Thursday, Miller was served cereal, toast, a banana, coffee and milk.
Lunch:
Davies said he’s noticed that patients really like having a choice at breakfast, so they used that information to have better lunch meals available.
Lunch usually consists of different soups and sandwiches.
Miller had shepherd's pie, corn, carrots, vegetable and milk for lunch on Thursday.
Dinner:
With the success of breakfast and lunch, they hope to transition that to dinner. That won’t be for a while, though, Davies said.
Currently, meals are made in the production centre in Vernon and shipped to Kelowna.
"Typically the patient doesn't have a lot of options because of the diet they're on, plus, we're doing about 400 meals at supper time. The current system doesn't allow a lot of choices," Davies explained.
The meals are cooked and then are frozen using a blast freezer. Davies said this maintains the nutritional value of the meals.
Even though the meals are frozen and then shipped to Kelowna to be reheated, Davies said they use a lot of fresh, local fruits and vegetables. Interior Health also has complete control over the quality of the meals because Interior Heath employees are doing the cooking.
“We make a lot of our own products that other health authorities might buy from Campbell’s or Nestles."
Dinner meals include roast beef, roast turkey, meatloaf, chicken stir-fry or lasagna.
The freezing system won’t be forever Davies said. Interior Health is working on making sure patients have more options at dinner as they do with breakfast and lunch.
Miller spent some time in a hospital in Ontario and she said Kelowna’s food is better than Ontario’s.
The only suggestion she has is to make the portions a little bit smaller.
"A lot of the times you get a dinner-size lunch. If I eat the lunch, I can't eat the supper because it's too much."
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