Time for NHS hospital trusts to start putting healthy, nutritious and locally produced food on the menu - Sarah Todd

Firstly, on what must have been the hottest day of the year so far, all the heating was on full blast. The rooms were unbearably hot and, of course, none of the windows could be opened to let in any fresh air.

Somebody sensible said it must be difficult trying to get a temperature that is warm enough for the elderly and very poorly who feel the cold more. Well surely, with all the brains in Britain, somebody should be able to come up with a workable solution.

Perhaps it’s just an old wives’ tale that fresh air helps prevent bugs, but it was impossible not to imagine everybody leaving with some lurgy or other from sitting in such close proximity in this stifling heat.

Secondly, some smashing staff kept coming around with a drinks trolley. No, not piled high with Martini making ingredients like a scene out of a 1970s James Bond film, but with tea, coffee and suchlike.

There were stacks of plastic-wrapped biscuits and pastries, but not a single piece of fruit. A tangerine or a banana, having their own carbon friendly non-plastic wrappings, would have surely been a better option?

For those that remember the television series about the Irish priest Father Ted, the hospital staff were just like his housekeeper Mrs Doyle foisting these sweet treats on people.

Meanwhile, all around the hospital, the vending machines were groaning under the weight of sugary drinks and unhealthy snacks.

All, of course, at a time when obesity costs the NHS around £6.5bn a year and is the second biggest preventable cause of cancer. Two-thirds of the British adult population are overweight, with more than one in four - 27 per cent - actually obese.

Just short of a quarter of children aged ten to 11 in England are obese; all placing a very hefty pressure on the nation’s health service.

What sort of a message are they being sent if hospital staff give them biscuits while they are in hospital; it’s almost like giving such snacks an official seal of approval.

As an aside, the NHS dishes up 140 million inpatient meals per year, costing £633m.

There has been so much talk about it over the years, but it’s time for hospital trusts to start putting healthy, nutritious and locally produced food on the menu.

An interesting fact - at a time when over 3,500 tonnes of unappetising hospital food ends up in the bin a year - is that cooking fresh food on site would work out cheaper than buying ready meals from outside catering companies. It’s not rocket science, if hospital food gets better then less of it will end up getting thrown out and money will be saved.

Moving on from food, the third observation was made when it was time to leave. Sat in the waiting area at the hospital pharmacy your correspondent was the only person to cough up the £9.90 prescription charge in over half an hour. In and out people came, plenty of young men and women of working age in designer clothes, but not one of them put their hand in their pocket to pay.

Don’t take this perk off the pensioners - they have enough to contend with from this Government - but is it really right that around 90 per cent of prescription items dispensed in the community are given free of charge?

There must be savings to make here. Not least GPs doing regular reviews and noticing items that no longer need to be handed out like those aforementioned biscuits.

In what has become something of a trend recently, this reporter was left feeling like one of the only ones left in the world forking out.

Looking for some inspirational words to back up all the above, there are plenty of sayings about big changes having small beginnings.

Nobody can say sorting out the NHS isn’t a terrible task, but in a world used to the instant fix - the shiny suited press conference and big announcement - is it not good old-fashioned housekeeping and the sort of common sense that the matrons of yesteryear used to rule the roost with, that could get the ball rolling?

As Vincent Can Gough - now he would send today’s NHS into a spin with his cut off ear - said: “Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.”