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I just spent an unexpected week in Northwest Community Hospital, where I worked my way through much of its menu (with the caveat that certain restrictions applied to my diet on some days). Having done several interviews with foodservice people at other hospitals, and seen some of the interesting ethnic choices available at Swedish Covenant in Chicago and the "farm fresh" menu at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., for example, I was interested to see what this Arlington Heights hospital would offer in the way of creativity.
Almost nothing except the ordering system, in which you can order what you want from a menu on more or less your own schedule. You call a number and they bring the meal 45 minutes later. One drawback is that there doesn't seem to be a good system for monitoring when a patient doesn't call. It's been a while since I was last in a hospital overnight, but I recall that meals appeared whether I wanted them or not, and nurses monitored what I ate. At NCH, although nurses reminded me to order meals, no one appeared to notice when I didn't.
Unimaginative American food fills the menu, which, based on a conversation with a friend who is a frequent patient there, remains unchanging, except for one daily soup.
The soups were decent, all but a really nasty and glutinous cream of potato. Cream of chicken and vegetable soup were better than canned, anyway, and the chicken noodle was quite good. Once freed from a soft-foods diet, I had a tossed salad instead, and it was the basic iceberg and this and that that you'd expect, but it tasted really wonderful after a week of nothing fresh or crunchy. That constitutes the "starters" section of the menu.
I wasn't allowed things like pizza, hot dogs or hamburgers, but the grilled chicken breast sandwich was all that is bland, on a cottonlike bun. Tuna salad compared to what you'd get out of a vending machine, and I have no reason to believe that the other cold sandwiches would be better. Grilled cheese was plastic substance inside soggy bread.
Cottage cheese with fruit was, well, cottage cheese with fruit (canned peaches, canned pears, chunks of melon). Not even a maraschino cherry for color.
On the first night I was up to eating, I passed on the meatloaf, often a safe institutional choice, after the order taker answered my inquiry about it by saying, "It's all right ... if you put gravy on it." I took up her strong recommendation of the sauteed tilapia instead. Tilapia is not my favorite seafood -- I think of it as the tofu of fish -- but this was more tasteless than usual and overcooked. I expect the "compliments" another foodservice staffer said this dish draws are all for its creamy lemon-dill sauce, which was pleasant enough, although the dill was undetectable and the lemon rather muted.
The next night, I tried beef fajitas. It was nothing like the grilled dish you get in Tex-Mex establishments, but a reasonably palatable mixture of sauteed beef strips, bell peppers and onions with a cardboard tortilla, a mild tomatoey salsa, and the saving grace of real sour cream and shredded cheddar and a touch of cilantro. I ordered it three nights running, unable to face up to risking the rest of my permitted menu: roasted turkey breast with gravy; bow-tie pasta with marinara or meat sauce; or beef stew. (Not allowed to me, the other choices were grilled chicken caesar salad and Mediterranean vegetable platter with pita and hummus.)
One night, I braved the stew, but couldn't manage more than three bites. My appetite is low, but not that low. It was simply inedible. Mushy and bad tasting. A blueberry muffin was also, incredibly, uneatable -- gummy and tasteless. Dinner rolls were unaccountably sweet, like King's Hawaiian bread.
Breakfast foods were adequate, although the practice of putting the toast under a cover with the eggs meant it was always damp and soggy.
Nutrition is such a vital part of health, and I wonder when medical facilities are going to wake up to the fact that providing tasty meals will help patients get better faster. I have an elderly friend who nearly died because the food at a rehab center was so awful he couldn't eat it. They had to put him on a feeding tube.
I have an educated palate and I'm a professional judge of food quality, but I'm not a fussy eater. I can normally stomach mediocre and even poorly prepared fare with aplomb, even when I'm not particularly hungry, something my work has often required me to do. If, even sick, there were meals I couldn't eat, there's something seriously wrong.
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