How to survive Zombie, aka Hospital, Food

Zombies are in the news this week.  World War Z with Brad Pitt is in theatres.  Let’s take a moment to reflect on Brad Pitt…or not. Your choice. Look away if you want.

I had my own experience with zombies this week.  I was acting like one. I ended up in the hospital with some scary symptoms and was frightened some more by….dah, dah, DAH, zombie food.  You know zombie food, right?

No, it’s not brains. Zombie food looks like real food, sort of, but is overcooked, dried out, blah. The life is sucked out of it.  That was my experience this week.


To be fair to my local hospital, I have a bunch of allergies so I can only eat fresh food with no additives. You know it's bad when the night nurse says to the day nurse, “She’s allergic to everything.”  Even jello, the hospital staple. Hospitals must work within their budget.  Bland meals are often a necessary evil.  But hospital food has a reputation.  Never mind people are mostly sick when they come to the hospital or scared or confused or must be fed restricted diets for good reason. Those factors can't help their opinion of whatever comes in on their tray. "More hospitality. Less hospital." according to Aladdin Co. who makes designer hospital trays. But it is still a tray in a hospital room.

I asked friends to tell me their best and worst experiences with hospital food. I wanted to be fair and my brain needed some lively support!  Here is what I learned from their contributions:

Anything tastes good to a woman who has just endured hours and hours of labor, even bad sandwiches, apparently hospitals’ “throw something at that starving mother” weapon of choice! Make sure a friend or loved one is on call, no matter the hour, to bring you whatever you crave. It's the last time you are allowed to indulge in pregnancy induced cravings! But that's not only advice for pregnant women. Ask for help with your hunger pangs if you are stuck in the medical center for all sorts of reasons. However, there are also good reasons for not eating something from home. Mind your restrictions.

When in doubt, go with the chocolate pudding, ice cream, BACON (I discovered that was true), or cake. They are hard to mess up. Unless you have allergies to corn or wheat like me. Even when alerted, I still received a majority of items that were on my do-no-eat list because they saw corn the vegetable but didn't restrict corn-based ingredients. Oh well, I lost two pounds in two days.

Most bad hospital food experiences involve what we treasure as comfort or special occasion meals: scrambled eggs (the closest thing to brains for zombies), pizza, steak (there is a reason hospitals don’t give new parents steak dinners anymore). If asked what you want to eat, don’t set yourself up for a failed experience. Do NOT have expectations and you may be pleasantly surprised by a meal. Except for the scrambled eggs. Again, order bacon. Toast is apparently iffy.

Fish often is served at inappropriate times. I can't give the details. Just too nauseating.

For me, it was the collards that put me over the edge.  Yes, I am Southern. Yes, I live in the South. But collards don’t strike me as hospital food for the masses. They are an acquired taste and not for everyone. When  you leave off the ham hocks and vinegar, hospital requirements, well, those collards are doomed to remain on the plate. I didn’t ask for them but they were what I got and they weren't good for the gitten. Sigh. Brains gone bad.

My collards were not this pretty. Think slime. Find a healthy collard recipe here at Allrecipes.com

Now that I am home and the zombie symptoms are receding, I realize the best nourishment I had in the hospital wasn't the food. The prayers and good thoughts of others AND a Kindle kept me going. I'm thankful for those things and thankful for my friends whose contributions made this post so easy to write. 

PS. To be fair, I also found great things hospitals are doing to give their patients a better food experience.  You can read about them here and here and here . And one of our Yankee-Belle contributors is connected to the hospital food service by marriage. I am hoping Jan Drexler will chime in!

So what are your experiences with hospital food, good or bad, or, for that matter, with zombies?