Patient meals

Our Catering Production Unit is based at our City Hospital Campus. The meals produced here by our chefs are served to patients by our Food Services team across all of our sites at NUH.

We work closely with local farms and food suppliers to support the use of British and local produce wherever possible across our menus. We use fresh ingredients to produce home cooked style dishes for our patients.

We are working towards our Green Plan and carbon reduction by sourcing sustainable ingredients, reducing our use of plastics, reducing food waste and recycling via bio digestors. We use more plant rich ingredients such as vegetables, fruits, beans, pulses and non dairy alternatives and ensure our energy use is efficient.

Good nutrition and hydration is essential, and is a fundamental of our treatment for patients. Our menus are created with support from our clinical teams to ensure that quality, taste and nutritional values are met.

Assisted mealtimes (mealtimes matter) aim to provide our patients with support and assistance to enhance their nutritional intake and give them time to enjoy the mealtime experience without non essential interruptions.

At NUH, we know that many factors can impact food intake and nutritional status, which includes age, race, religion, pregnancy, disability, sexuality and gender identity. We endeavor to ensure as many of our patients needs as possible. If any support is required with choosing appropriate options from our menus please speak to one of our ward team.

NUH is an accredited Hospital with Coeliac UK and our Food Hygiene rating is 5. 

Many of our Dishes on our menus have been chosen by the people of Nottingham and our chefs have picked their favourite dishes to make. Look out for the chef's hat symbol to see which dishes are they are!

Adaptive crockery and cutlery is available to increase independent eating and drinking.

We provide blue crockery for our dementia patients, which can improve their intake.

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Menu and Ordering Information

Our team of Food Service Assistants work alongside the ward team to take meal orders and serve food and drinks to our patients.

Our meal service times are typically breakfast 8am, lunch at 12 and evening meal at 5pm.

Our breakfast includes toast and cereals, lunch is a choice of hot and cold options to include a main course and a dessert. The evening meal is a choice of hot and cold options including a soup starter, main course and dessert (some options and services may differ due to specific dietary needs).

Meal orders for lunch and evening meals are taken daily.

Our main menu booklet can be found by the bedside or provided by the ward team. The menu booklet also includes Cultural, Texture Modified, Extra Choice, Finger Food, Allergen Aware and Gluten Free Menus.

In addition we have menus available for our children and younger people, patients following a renal diet and many other specialised diet menus. 

We have a late or missed meal service and snack items available. Please ask the ward team for assistance with any of these.

Ingredients containing allergens are used in our Catering Production Unit and whilst we follow safe practices for reducing cross contamination we cannot guarantee there is no risk of any 'may contains' for allergen containing ingredients.

Allergen information is available for all our items, please ask a member of the ward team for information.

Items on our menus display symbols, these include a chefs hat to highlight our chefs favourite dishes, a red heart for the healthier choices, the letter E for that higher energy items, letters 'HP' for items that are higher in protein, a V for vegetarian items, Vg for items suitable for a vegan diet and a Level 7 Easy to chew symbol for items that are softer and tender. Please refer to the menu booklet to find further information on what each of these symbols mean.

Our menu's

Please select the menu that is appropriate for your requirements, in addition we have a selection of specialist menus, which if you are advised to follow, the ward team will provide you with the menu.

Nutrition and Allergen Information

Allergen information — We have allergen information available for all items, please ask the ward team for the information you require.

Nutritional Information — We have the nutritional information available for all items, please ask the ward team for the information you require. 

If you follow carbohydrate counting as part of your diabetes care and management, please access the CHO counting link below.