Hospital food gets a health warning!

We all know the mental image and phrases that come to mind when you hear “hospital food” but for people with food allergies having a meal at the Great Escape Café inside Christchurch Public Hospital could be quite a unsafe thing to do.  Let me tell you why by telling you my story.

Of late I have had to be in and out of hospital a lot for appointments and this particular day decided I would head up to the Great Escape Café (a café which is open to staff, patients and visitors in the Hospital) thinking, as you do when you head to a café, I’ll grab a bite here instead of getting something elsewhere that will no doubt be very unhealthy.

As I have Anaphylaxis to Gluten (this means I can’t even touch gluten without my fingers blistering and finding it hard to breathe) I figured that being a hospital café, run by Medirest – the medical branch of Eurest – that I would be able to easily find something safe for me to eat.  Oh how wrong I was!

I went in and asked the lady behind the counter what options there were that were Gluten free, and got the response “umm I don’t know I think the potatoes are?!”. With an allergy like Anaphylaxis “I dunno” isn’t really good enough. So I explained I have a severe allergy and asked if she would be so kind as to ask a senior member of staff what was gluten free.  

After a decent wait, she came back to say nothing was! Well I just couldn’t accept this, and I understand that the people there are just doing their job to serve the food, so promptly headed out of the Café, without buying anything as there was nothing but some over ripe fruit that I could eat, and went to the suggestion box to tell them what I thought of the situation.

I honestly didn’t expect a response but I did a month later from Joseph Watkins the Retail Area Manager for Medirest.  I was very pleased to read that he was not impressed by the service we received on our visit to The Great Escape and apparently he has ensured that all his staff had been retrained in their allergy procedures.  

The pleasing side of the letter soon went when I read the second last paragraph of his letter, “Any gluten free products produced on site are promoted as “no gluten added” due to the production area not being allergen free and the potential risk of contamination.”

Now, when I can work, I work in the Emergency Department of Christchurch hospital and I have NEVER seen any sign that shows the gluten free options being “No Gluten Added”, I have however seen the GF sign which is simply a picture of wheat and the letters G and F over it.  Even if you were to ask I would be certain the people serving wouldn’t know if it were completely gluten free or not.

If this is the case for gluten free, then what is the situation for less publicly known allergies like Dairy, Soy, Nut etc?!  Also, if they can produce gluten free food for people staying in hospital (which I sure hope is completely gluten free but who would know?!) then why is it so hard to have it available for staff, outpatients and visitors?

I will be writing a reply to Medirest and shall keep you all posted, but wanted everyone with allergies or people who you know with allergies to know that that particular café is useless and really quite dangerous to eat at!