red cup, black cup

I spent five days in St. Mary's Hospital in Sechelt last month and five days at VGH (Vancouver General Hospital) more recently.

The food service at both hospitals is contracted by Sodexo, and I thought it would be fun to compare the two from a patient-experience perspective.

Jell-O is typical hospital fare, so let's start with that. Pretty hard to screw up Jell-O, right? Jell-O at St. Mary's is kind of, well, slimy. It's almost tasteless and slithers rather than jiggles. It has an odd smell, but that could have been the plastic container it came in. It may have been better if not served warm. VGH? Real Jell-O, or something that looked and tasted like real Jell-O, served chilled, in a plastic bowl that didn't stink.

St. Mary's Sodexo soup is probably edible if you like oregano. A lot of oregano. It seemed to be the only vegetation in the bowl of muddy, brown, scummy liquid. The other primary ingredient was salt, and lots of it. It was served cool, but I understand that chilled soups are all the rage in trendy Yaletown restaurants. The cooks obviously weren't on the ball at VGH, serving hot soups with identifiable veggies like carrots in a flavourful broth that wouldn't be life-threatening to a cardiac patient.

Perhaps it's a simple matter of the dishes. In both places they're designed with identical, disposable plastic lids, but the cups, plates and bowls themselves are made of a different type of material. While VGH has a hard plastic, St. Mary's has opted for a softer, almost rubbery material. I'm guessing this is a safety factor. A rubber cup would do far less damage than a hard plastic one if flung at another patient, or a food-service worker, in a fit of rage.

Every day I tried to send my trays back, but I had to keep them for at least an hour. Why so long?

"So They know I delivered it," I was impatiently told by a food-service worker who pushed my gardening magazine on the floor with the tray.

"I can't eat this food, it's awful. Please don't bring me any more because it seems a terrible waste."

"We must deliver the trays, ma'am," she said with barely-concealed outrage.

Conspiracy theorists might think the kitchen at St. Mary's is on the take from MacDonalds, Mr. Submarine and other local eateries because of the many meals from them brought in by visitors. But no, patients are allowed to keep their own food in a kitchenette on the floor.

At both VGH and St. Mary's, juice came in little packages like you'd get from a vending machine. Of course, both were supplied by Sodexo. The odd thing is, VGH juice was juice and St. Mary's "juice" was some kind of flavoured drink that tasted like over-sweetened, watered-down Kool-Aid. Room temperature at St. Mary's, chilled at VGH.

At home, I make both oatmeal and Cream of Wheat. They aren't difficult to make, but require a bit of attention or you end up with something lumpy, either too watery or too gluey. Guess who wasn't paying attention to their porridge? Yup, and it was even better at VGH than my own.

At St. Mary's, I finally asked, "Why is the food here so terrible?"
A Sodexo employee snapped, "We cook for many, many people, and the food has to be put on trays and brought up from the kitchen. What do you expect!" Sorry, but unless the food is being sent from Vancouver by pack mule, that's not a good enough excuse. At VGH, far more meals are served and there are far more floors, patients and real estate. On my wing of the 12th floor, my meals were just fine.

Hospitals are boring, so patients make up little games. On the first floor at St. Mary's, we played What's in the Cup. Is it tea? Is it coffee? Why doesn't it look, taste or smell like either? We'd have a sniff, a sip and guess, but we were never sure. I decided to ask the experts, the Sodexo employees who served the dark and nasty brew.

"What's in the cup?"

"Coffee," she said, obviously not interested in chit-chat.

"How can you tell?"

"It's morning," she replied, in that same tone you'd use if someone asked a really, really stupid question.

Later, with a different food-service person:

"What's in the cup?

"It's tea," she cheerfully told me.

"How can you tell?" I asked. "Everything that comes in a cup looks, smells and tastes the same."
She laughed, and let me in on a secret.
"You know how we tell? It's simple... coffee's in the red cup, tea's in the black cup."