Celebrity chefs, food experts and 20 years of reviews, inquiries and initiatives costing more than £54m have failed to improve hospital food, according to a new report which calls for compulsory nutritional standards to be introduced.
Loyd Grossman and Albert Roux, who have been involved in food initiatives of the past, are supporting the call of the Campaign for Better Hospital Food for mandatory standards.
Grossman, the TV presenter and gastronome 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 raising the morale of 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," he said.
"There has not yet been a noticeable change in the way hospital food is produced, prepared, cooked and served."
The campaign, under the umbrella of Sustain, the alliance for better food and farming, says that more than 82,000 hospital meals are thrown in the bin every day and 67% of hospital staff do not want to eat the food that is given to patients.
Since 1992, governments have introduced 21 initiatives that have failed to improve the food served on the wards, which cost more than £54m of taxpayers' money, says the report. They failed because hospitals did not adopt the recommendations. Instead of a voluntary approach, say the 89 organisations supporting the campaign, food standards in hospitals need to be mandatory, as they are in schools.
Celebrity chefs have regularly been drafted in to review hospital food and suggest changes. Some of them express their disappointment, in the report, with the lack of progress.
Chef John Benson-Smith, who worked with Grossman, said the experience was fascinating, joyful and inspiring but also frustrating and bewildering. "The huge task to improve the food that was placed on the patient's plate was indeed of an epic scale and proportion. Hospital food does not need 'tickling' or a handful of greatly composed PR words again. It is in need of a huge rethink," he said.
Albert Roux, who ran the Michelin-starred Le Gavroche with his brother Michel, advised the Department of Health in 1995 on how to improve hospital food. "We must not think that high quality hospital food is too difficult or expensive to achieve. After all, simple food is often the best food – and fresh seasonal produce is cheap to buy," he said.
"If we have learned anything from the last 20 years it is that meetings, speeches and gimmicks do not work – what we need now is change to the whole hospital food system, starting with the introduction of food standards for every patient meal."
Alex Jackson, co-ordinator of the campaign, 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."