"Ecellent treatment but poor menu choices for..."

I cannot praise highly enough the care I received recently on CCU for my pericarditis and subsequent stay on CDU with pneumonia. Nurses and HCA's were brillant and I couldn't have been treated better.

I have one gripe however. As a recently diagnosed diabetic I have moved onto a fairly low carbohydrate diet, avoiding potatoes, white rice, white pasta etc as much as possible and was amazed to see that there were no meals available highlighted as suitable for diabetics.

When I questioned the girl serving the meals, (excellent service by the way) she took my comments on board, went and asked her supervisor and returned with an answer the following day. Apparantly the meals marked as healthy eating are suitable for diabetics but these all were served with either mashed potato or white rice which wuld not be my first choice for a healthy diabetic friendly meal.

The pudding menu is even worse, with the fruit cocktail in juice being recommended. This would not be ideal but it was the only thing that I considered safe enough to eat from the choices available. I tried the yoghourt one day. A full fat yoghurt containing between 39 & 44 grams of sugar depending on what flavour was chosen.

With diabetes being highlighted in the press and on TV I find it difficult to understand how a hospital can be unable to offer something as simple as a low fat no added sugar yoghort.

I believe the menu needs an urgent review to improve the options for the large population for whom sugar provides such a problem.

Oh in case it is felt that this only affects a small minority of patients, on a 10 bed ward in the 3 days I was there there were never less than 3 diabetics on the ward. One day there were 5 of us.