British hospital Lancashire hotpot dinner, photo by jayneandd on flickr- this is actually one of the nicest examples of hospital food available on the internet.

People who have been to prison (I heard this from Martha Stewart herself, on her TV show) always say that the worst thing about it is the abominable institutional food. However, according to the BBC, the food in British hospitals may be even worse than what you would get in jail. Imagine that! If you dare.

This amusing article in the Guardian brought to our attention a certain unfortunate Brit who is currently trapped in a hospital with a bad leg, and who has been blogging about the terrible food, by posting pictures of it and asking readers to guess what it actually is. The game is known as “Hospital food bingo”:

In one post, Traction Man recalls looking forward to Southern-style drumsticks, but laments that: “Unfortunately the menu didn’t state the origin of southern. In my case it was southern Ethiopia. Never have I seen such scrawny and aged chicken. There was more stick than drum.”

And some of the other comments could put you off British food altogether, so we will refrain from quoting any more of them here! But bedpans are mentioned.

And here is a blog showing photos of hospital food from all over the world. It doesn’t exactly look outstandingly delicious in any of those countries, sadly. We don’t know why, but presumably the difficulty of voting with your feet while incapacitated must come into it.

Perhaps the ideal solution is to beg a friend or family member to bring in daily nutrition for you. Of course, you will then be forever in their debt and completely unable to repay the favour, unless they too are hospitalised one day and need you to do the same, but we think lifelong indebtedness might be a small price to pay for avoiding some of the worst food known to humankind. In the meantime, we would like to wish excellent health to all our readers and customers; may you never need to research this subject further.