[jambutty]

As far as Queens Park is concerned the food leaves the kitchens in an edible condition if you can get over the cooking without ANY salt bit. Just as a small aside. The human body NEEDS salt and without it you DIE. OK! I accept that we have got used to using too much salt over the years but to remove it completely is absolute madness especially for manual workers who strain their muscles in their job and sweat. In fact we all sweat to some degree or other even when asleep in bed so we lose salt and other minerals that must be replaced.

What makes the food just about inedible is the time that it stays in the heated trolleys outside the wards slowly drying out. The last time I was a guest of the NHS, some 4 years ago now, our food trolley would arrive an hour before the meals were due to be served. Goodness knows how long the trolley was in the kitchens waiting to be collected. The only decent food was the soup, what little there was of it.

I know that with hundreds of meals to make someone has to be first and someone has to be last but surely the various wards could stagger their actual meal times to coincide with the trolley arriving and not leave it in the passageway waiting until it was time to serve the meals.

Edible food is as much a part of the treatment as pills and potions etc.