BE patient as improvements to hospital food in Bury are on their way!

More choice and a range of new dishes will soon be on the menu when Bury and Fairfield help usher in a £40 million nationwide scheme to overhaul hospital food.

A new menu for the NHS has been designed by Lloyd Grosman and a team of seven leading chefs who have come up with a range of 10 "chefs specials".

The aim of the exercise is to offer more choice, more fresh food, more options for vegetarians and others with special diets.

Various dishes have been extensively trialled and tested with patients, hospital chefs, nutritionists and dieticians.

Among the new dishes, which will begin to be served in Bury hospitals this summer, are butter bean and bacon soup, steak and kidney pie and olive oil mash and posh pear and chocolate crumble. Each NHS Trust is expected to have at least one "chefs specials" available to patients by August and the full selection of all dishes in place by the end of the year.

Mr David Clements, Bury Health Care NHS Trust hospitals' general manager, admits that hospital food has been the staple diet for many comedians .

"We've asked our patients what they think about the food and I can't pretend there aren't problems," he said.

"Among those raised are that the quality is inconsistent and that we tend to serve our meals too early."

Now, hospitals are being advised to provide patients with their main meal in the evening and not at lunchtime.

Mr Clements added: "At the moment, we tend to do dinner at lunchtime with a light evening supper. We're now looking at a whole new menu

at local level which offers more choice, particularly for ethnic minority patients.

"I think our menu is very good as it is. Another big change proposed is a 24-hour catering service called a snack box."

This involves hungry patients being able to be provided with snacks, such as sandwiches and biscuits, during the evening and in the middle of the night.

Mr Clements continued: "All this is definitely about improving the service which, I believe, isn't really very bad at the moment.

"By complying with the new national menu, we will be able to offer patients an even wider choice."

The new national menu plans will go before a meeting of the Trust next week.