Abstract

Food wastage is an important issue in the hospital food service of Great Britain. Not only does wastage have moral implications with, for example, the environment, it also is a measure of acceptance and has important financial ramifications. In public sector food service operations such as hospitals, prisons, homes and day care centres for older people, budgetary constraints are real issues. Care needs to be taken to ensure that items, delivered to a ward and not served immediately or opened, have remained under appropriate temperature control. Otherwise they should be regarded as wastage. The main consequence of food wastage is that patients may not be consuming a nutritionally balanced or even adequate diet. However some wastage is inevitable. Thus the reasonable and acceptable level of food wastage should be identified.