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Hospital Menu for diabetic person

I also was in hospital recently and asked for the Diabetic menu and was told they didn't have one. I asked to see menus suitable for Muslims, Jews etc and was told they were available.
I spoke to the Diabetic nurse at the hospital and told her that I could order anything on the menu even if was not suitable for and was told you are a sensible person and I wouldn't do that to which I replied so I must not eat anything on the menu she had no answer.
The strange thing was that they wanted to check my blood sugar readings either before I started to eat, whilst I was eating and immediately after I had eaten. The nurses always came to bed to make I was taking the correct amount of insulin which I self medicated.
With the NHS complaining about the cost of diabetic treatment you would think that they would make it a priority to make sure diabetics were, at least, provided with correct meals suitable for us.
 
douglas99 said:
Smash rather than freshly made, hand prepared mashed potato.
I hope you raised a complaint!!!
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No... I just wanted out at that point!
 
The cost of providing a decent protein content is too high. That's why society is in this dilemma.... sugar and carb are cheap to make and transport.
 

Yes, but it is a hospital not a restaurant, they can't cater for everyone's individual dietary requirements. Unless you were in for a very long stay I think you could survive on that menu without dying or having limbs chopped off.
 
I count myself very lucky I was only in for four days, so I was happy to pick and choose from the limited selections available. A couple of the nurses got funny about my refusal to eat carbs but I just told them I didn't like potatoes, bread, crackers, etc. as I didn't really feel like arguing with them.

Had I been in for much longer then I probably would have been more up front about it, continued to hunt and peck my way around the menus for the least carby options and told them to get off my back.
 
Just read the first few posts. I'm prediabetes and can eat some of the stuff in limited quantities but that's a Type 2 diet controlled HELL of a menu.....and it would bump me up having to eat carbs at virtually every meal....omelette excepted....
 
Catlady19 said:
Yes, but it is a hospital not a restaurant, they can't cater for everyone's individual dietary requirements. Unless you were in for a very long stay I think you could survive on that menu without dying or having limbs chopped off.
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Maybe not but it's not that hard to provide low carb options
 
When I was in hospital recently (not diabetes related but not planned for so couldn't go prepared!) I was offered breakfast & stupidly asked for porridge because I love that & didn't have much appetite. (Normally I can tolerate it because I go straight out for a walk afterwards). I asked for a small portion & no sugar but was told it came ready prepared. When it arrived it was one of those round cardboard cartons (you can buy similar in supermarkets)- bs before was 6.0 - I didn't eat all of it as it was very sweet. Anyway 2 hours later bs was 18?!!!!!!
When I asked & looked at tub it listed sugar, glucose syrup, sucrose, dextrose ........ etc etc
Won't make that mistake again!!!!
 
don't assume that an omelette is simply eggs - I used to work in the industry. There was an omelette mix which was rehydrated, whisked and then an egg added, whisk again and cooked. It contained dried eggs, but also other proteins and starches to bulk it up. These days starch and sugar is added to just about everything possible to maximise the profits.
 
I was in hospital last June and found the food disgusting!! It was mince almost every day, just dressed up as something different from the day before!! (Shepherds pie- Cottage pie- Spag bol- etc) There was no carb or sugar information at all. I am trying my best to keep LCHF and my last Hba1c was 38 ( highest it's been is 81!) I hate cheese. I can't even touch it as it makes me feel like my finger nails are curling up!! So when one of the 'so called' diabetic suitable meals was Jacket potato and cheese, and another was egg mayo sandwich on white bread, I went for the sandwich as the lesser of the two evils. The bread was so claggy that it stuck to the roof of my mouth, and the egg mayo had a lot of eggshell in it!! I had the jacket potato without the cheese the next day, but it was enormous and as hard as rock as it was hardly cooked!! But the thing that annoyed the most was that they came round to test my BG about 10 minutes after I had eaten! I told them that it was too soon and to come back in about 2 hours. I never saw them again! Good job I had taken my own meter in with me so I could keep tabs on how I was doing for myself! I was in for elective surgery, and felt fine. I lost 5lbs in three days as I was starving!! They gave me a form to fill in with regard to how I rated my stay in the hospital. One of the nurses told me to fill in the suggestion box with my complaint about the food not being suitable for type 2's. I did so, and never heard a word about it!!! The next time I was in (just before christmas with Sepsis from a water infection), the menu was exactly the same! No carb and sugar info or anything!! I somehow get the feeling that I'm flogging a dead horse!!
 
I was in hospital on 4 occassions over the summer - kidney stone, kidney stone infection and various other complications. On my first admission to hospital I was out of my head in pain and my blood sugars were through the floor. They offered me a sandwich. I said that I wanted to go home and nearly made it back to my car before I was threatened with being arrested - by a police officer, by attempting to drive whilst being totally incapacitated. he was right. Seconds later I collapsed into a wheel chair and was taken back to hospital and a cheese roll - my first taste of bread in nearly a year.

Low carb is working for me. I had similar hospital menus - absolutely unsuitable. Blood sugar regularly exceeding 12 - which the staff said was fine/understandable despite my own concern that it was not. (There is inadequate diabetes training in hospitals.)

Third visit to hospital, my wife was bringing me my meals. On the 4th visit, I was more mobile (just in for observation) - the nurses were happy for me to eat in the staff cafeteria - fry ups with lots of eggs, bacon and sausages. - blood sugar totally under control.

We are all different, but let's face it, These hospital menus are made up of comfort food. Nobody wants to eat a salad whilst they are recovering when a spotted **** and custard sounds much more fun. But that doesn't help now, does it?

T2 Oct 15. Diet, metformin and exercise - 10-13 times a week, no longer loosing the fight, back to winning.
 
Yes, no one is a prisoner.
Anyone can eat in the visitor canteen, or walk to the hospital shop for snacks, or even get a McDonald's brought in by a friend in they want to.
 
douglas99 said:
Yes, no one is a prisoner.
Anyone can eat in the visitor canteen, or walk to the hospital shop for snacks, or even get a McDonald's brought in by a friend in they want to.
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That's all well and good if you're well enough to go trekking off around the hospital, but people in hospital are often not well enough to do so or don't have money with them etc.. On the occasion when the ward orderly lied through their teeth to try and make me eat ice-cream I was in intensive care attached to drips and unable to get out of bed!
 

I have to be honest, I won't have been overly fussed what I ate under those conditions.
Sometimes there's more to life than worrying about diabetes, and if a spike in your blood sugar is going to affect the rest of your time here.
 

and they may not have family or friends who are able to come twice a day to bring food for them. Our nearest hospital is 25 miles away.
 
In an ideal world it would be great if hospitals could cater for our very specific diet but until a lot more people eat our way there won't be enough people complaining to force them to cater for us. I suppose the only way forward is for each person affected to make a formal complaint in writing.
 
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