James Martin's Operation Hospital Food TV show welcomed by HCA

Celebrity chef James Martin's third BBC TV series looking at the state of hospital food has been welcomed by the Hospital Caterers Association (HCA).

Operation Hospital Food follows Martin as he attempts to transform the food served at a number of NHS hospitals across the country.

THE HCA welcomed the new series after the previous two were successful in highlighting the limited resources with which many hospital catering managers have to operate.

Andy Jones, HCA chair, said the programme will showcase Martin's ideas to help hospital catering teams produce tasty and nutritious on even the tightest budgets, as well as draw attention to the lack of investment in hospital kitchens and the limited food costs that many caterers are working with.

"With James stressing the significant contribution good food makes to patient wellbeing, nutritional care and recovery, the important underlying message to the Government and NHS Trust Boards is that nutritious, wholesome food is the simplest and best form of medicine.

"As such, it should be given far higher priority throughout the health care sector," said Jones.

He said that the HCA was aware that not all hospitals are providing the highest standard of patient foodservice as they would like to but added that in many cases, it was often for reasons outside of their control.

"It is important to recognise that it is not the type of food service a hospital operates that is a barrier to quality or good service," he explained. "No matter whether a hospital has a traditional on site cooking facility or if it operates a cook chill or cook freeze system, all can have their difficulties if they are not funded correctly."