By Jeremy Sollars
The saying ‘food is medicine’ never rings truer than at Warwick Hospital, where anything up to 10,000 meals are served up every month by its catering corps.
The hospital’s kitchen is humming along after a full refurbishment completed just a couple of months ago, and everything is gleaming stainless steel and shiny glass, and an air of brisk efficiency.
Not only is the task of feeding not only general and acute-care hospital patients but also residents of The Oaks nursing home next door a daily miracle of organisation – it also has to meet exacting nutritional standards.
As the hospital’s manager of Operational Services Anna Lidden says, people “often forget there is a clinical treatment dimension to hospital food – it’s part of helping patients to get better”.
“Recipes have to meet State-wide Queensland Health nutritional standards and our menus here at Warwick Hospital are also designed under the direction of our dietician and speech pathologist,” Anna told the Free Times.
“Menus are fully revised twice a year under best practice, and again that’s under the scrutiny of our dietician.
“We also have to cater for special dietary requirements such as vegetarian and gluten-free, and obviously we provide a certain amount of ‘texture-modified’ foods for the patients who require those, and children’s meals.
“We have kitchen staff here who have 40 years of service – they’ve seen a lot of changes in patients’ meals in that time.
“Some of them can remember the days of the deep-fryer and tripe and the like – obviously today we’re much more aware of and in the mindset of healthy eating.”
Anna said The Oaks residents do get their ‘special treats’, which along with their regular meals are prepared in the hospital kitchen and transported to the nursing home in mobile warmers.
Also of note is the preference of Warwick Hospital to source and use local produce wherever possible – Queensland Health ultimately calls for catering tenders and has the final say, but Anna Lidden and her staff have input and advocate for fresh local produce as much as practicable.
Current local suppliers include Wickham Farms, Percy’s Fruit and Stanthorpe Meats.
“Most of what we do is cooked fresh,” Anna said.
“There are some items – such as texture-modified meals – which come in as a prepared item, but the majority of the 400 or so meals which come out of our kitchen every day are cooked from fresh.
“With the refurbishment of the kitchen, we’ve also sourced appliances from local retailers and used contractors for the work itself – we like to support the local economy wherever and whenever we can.”
Anna said the former kitchen was “gutted” and catering staff had to work out of temporary facilities for around eight weeks while the work was completed.
“It really is a credit to all of them that service delivery never failed despite all of the disruption – it was a remarkable feat,” she said.
“The kitchen underwent a complete re-build – four walls, new flooring and ceilings and work stations and equipment, all to best-practice and industry standard.
“It’s actually enabled us to expand our menu selection, and we have a special kitchenette with the ability produce things like Kosher and Halal foods if required.”
Warwick Hospital food fun facts …
* Catering staff serve up an average of around 400 meals per day, including morning and afternoon tea;
* A total of 9790 meals were dished up in July alone, and 10,735 in August; in 2016-2017 a total of 213,759 were cooked and served;
* A typical ‘meal service’ such as lunch or dinner will see between 15 and 20 kilos of protein, such as chicken, prepared as part of menu items;
* The kitchen cooks up around 5250 kilos of meat per year; potato and pumpkin alone is around 1260 kilos per year;
* As well as cooks and operational catering staff, around 75 people work in the Operational Services section of the hospital, which includes cleaners, grounds, security and maintenance personnel.
