Nutritional analysis of hospital meals and comparison with European standards

Abstract

Introduction & aim: Nutritional analysis of meals offered toy hospitalized patients is an indication of dietetic intake when 100% consumption of meal offered is consumed. When nutritional analysis is accompanied with simple visual techniques like food plate consumption it can become an accurate estimation of food intake and thus it is useful for nutritional assessment of hospitalized patients. Materials and methods: Nutritional analysis based on USDA 2011 nutrition composition base and the use of the IDIKA computer application was performed to 4 weekly hospital menus of different seasonality. Then the menus were compared as far as energy and protein content is concerned to RDVs for hospital nutrition published at ‘’The Nutrition and Hydration Digest: Improving Outcomes through Food and Beverage Services’’ guidelines of the British Dietetic Association/ the FoodCounts Group. Results: The “general’’ menu of the hospital provided: mean 2504 kcal/ day (min 2300-max 2804 kcal/ day) vs. EARs min 1810-max 2550 kcal/ day, πρωτεΐνη: mean 109,8 g/day vs. RNI 56 g/day. The number of serving by various food groups provided by the menu was for dairy 2,57 vs. min 3 servings/day, for meat and meat equivalents 2,24 servings/day vs min 2 servings/day, for fruits and vegetables 5,57 servings/day vs. min 5 servings/day and for bread and starchy equivalents 9,28 servings/day vs. min 5 servings/day. Conclusions: The performance of nutritional analysis of meals offered at hospitals exhibited the adherence of hospital meals offered as far as energy, protein and servings of food groups (with the exception of dairy products) to European guidelines and is a useful tool in the overall nutritional assessment of hospital patients.