You’ve been admitted to hospital. A doctor has ordered you not to eat for 16 hours. You finally get the green light to enjoy a meal.

What do you fancy? Probably not this.

An exhausted patient desperate to rebuild her strength after a rough night on a ward was served a meal that would have left a toddler unsated.

The woman could barely believe her eyes when the meagre meal was slid across the tray table.

Hospital food is famously not exactly Michelin-starred – but a quarter of a tin of beans is stingy even by NHS standards.

‘Beans mean Heinz’ goes the slogan of the famous firm – unless you work at Royal Stoke University Hospital, where ‘beans means mean’.

Catering staff returned with a jacket potato and a packet of butter, but when she unwrapped it, it was empty.

The 42-year-old patient – who chose to remain anonymous – praised the staff who cared for her but said that the state of food in the hospital is an indicator of how stretched the health service is.

She said: ‘They just came and plonked a plate of beans in front of me. I was in a state of shock. I said ‘is someone having a laugh?’. You couldn’t make it up.

‘I pressed my buzzer to complain and made it pretty clear to them how hungry I was in the politest possible way.

‘They offered me a salad but by that point I just wanted carbs.

‘They then turned up with this jacket potato and an empty packet of butter. God knows where they’d found this potato. I was that blimmin’ hungry by then, I just ate it anyway.

‘It tasted pretty awful but I was grateful for it.

‘I don’t know how you’re supposed to get better if that’s what they’re feeding you? Hospital food is cruddy at the best of times but this was the most pathetic meal I’d ever seen.’

The woman is now back at home recuperating after being discharged last week.

She expressed sympathy for hospital staff run ragged by the pressures of Covid-19: ‘I feel so sorry for the staff. They are just rushed off their feet.

‘The nurses were really lovely, I couldn’t fault the care, but they don’t have enough bodies to do the work.

‘The NHS is at breaking point. They even had to open another Covid ward when I was there.

‘Thankfully I’m on the mend now but my baked beans meal is just one example of how over-stretched they are.’

Lorraine Whitehead, University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust director of estates, facilities and PFI, said: ‘We take any complaint or concerns raised by patients or their families seriously; this has been raised with our catering providers to ensure that the food served is delivered to the highest standards possible.’

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