Department of Health has released date today showing that Government rules for food served to NHS patients are being missed by almost 50% of hospitals in England. The data revealed that: • 48% of hospitals do not meet Government Buying Standards that give hospitals basic standards to meet on food quality, nutrition, environmental sustainability and animal welfare, standards which the Government says should be mandatory • Half of hospitals do not meet dietician guidelines outline by the British Dietetic Association, standards which the Government says should be mandatory • 30% of patients are at real risk of malnutrition in hospitals, yet only half of hospitals screened every patients for signs that they were struggling to get enough to eat. • ¼ of English hospitals do not have a food and drink strategy – a requirement of the hospital food standards which the Government says should be mandatory Katherine Button, from the Campaign for Better Hospital Food, said, 'The situation in hospital food standards is diabolical. When the hospital food standards were brought in two years ago, we were promised that these hospital food standards were legally binding. 'With half of hospitals still not meeting even the basic standards, we can now see that this is demonstrably not the case. This means that sick children in hospital wards are not getting the same quality of food that they are legally required to be fed at school when they are well. 'Enough is enough - we need equal legal protections for hospital food, like the protections that exist for food in schools and prisons.' Katharine Jenner, from Consensus Action on Salt, Sugar and Health, said: 'This is yet more evidence that voluntary measures don't work, even when they're dressed up as 'legally binding' in NHS standard contracts for hospitals. 'We need mandatory standards, with rigorous monitoring, reporting and meaningful sanctions for non-compliance. Whilst the Department of Health has presented this report as showing progress on compliance, the report should be renamed as a record of non-compliance. The statistics it reveals are shocking.' (source: Campaign for Better Hospital Food)