Catering staff at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust have netted a prestigious award recognising their work in preparing high-quality, nutritious meals every day for patients, staff and visitors.
The Trust is awarded the Soil Association’s Food for Life Catering Mark bronze award today (20 September 2016), which recognises their steps towards more sustainable, ethically sourced food for patients that meets nutritional guidelines.
The award comes as Guy’s and St Thomas’ unveils plans to launch its Nutritional Care Strategy. The strategy aims to help staff prevent malnutrition in vulnerable patients, provide safe specialist nutrition where required and encourage patients, staff and visitors to choose healthier food options.
Robert Cormack, group catering manager at Guy’s and St Thomas’, said:
“We are one of the few remaining hospitals making all our food freshly in our kitchen on site – the Catering Mark is the perfect tool to help us take our food to the next level, so we’re delighted to receive it.
“We already work closely with the clinical teams to ensure food is as much a part of a patients’ recovery as their treatment, and the mark was the perfect incentive for improving patient food even further – for example, we have taken out all additives, trans-fats and things that aren’t good for patients. It’s the simple little things that make the patient experience that little bit better.”
The mark is an independent verification which demonstrates that the catering team at Guy’s and St Thomas’ are using more fresh ingredients which are free from undesirable additives and trans fats, are better for animal welfare, and easily traceable. The award was presented on 20th September 2016.
Robert Cormack added:
“Achieving the Catering Mark did have its challenges. We had to change all our meat to farm-assured meat, including changing sandwich suppliers to match the standard of animal welfare required.
“We still found that we could keep the same favourite options on the menu, including beef ragout, chicken and mushroom pie and a fish option which is verified by the Marine Stewardship Council. It’s already helping improve our patient food and the next step is the visitor restaurants and cafes in the hospitals.”
The Trust has already benefitted from the Soil Association’s Catering Mark Suppliers Scheme, which enabled them to find fruit and vegetable suppliers Sheringhams Fine Foods Ltd., a London-based company that sources as much UK fresh produce as possible for the hospital, in keeping with seasonal availability.
Soil Association Catering Mark Project Manager, Lizzie Testani, said:
“It’s been fantastic to work with Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS to help them improve the food served to their patients. Healthy places need healthy food and it’s inspiring to see such a hard-working catering team dedicated to giving their patients the best opportunity for recovery. We’re looking forward to working with the team further in the future as we look to verify their staff and visitor food to a similarly high standard too.”
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