It’s no secret: hospital food, like plane food, is a thing that most people around the world do not look forward to having. Nothing is worse than having to be in a hospital, to be vulnerable, far away from the comforts of home, and then to be fed three square meals that are bland and frankly sad. One woman in Japan, however, has managed to salvage the reputation of hospital food for the rest of the world.
Imgurian jenkinsinjapan made waves online this month when she posted photos of the meals she was being served in a hospital in Mito, Japan, where she recently gave birth. According to Jenkins, the hospital meals she had were so delicious, she just had to share them online. In the blink of an eye, her post went viral, leaving the entire internet drooling.
“My C-section wasn’t planned so the food I got wasn’t really pre-surgery food. I couldn’t eat most of it anyway!” Turns out, she just got served what most of the patients at the hospital eat on a daily basis. “The meals weren’t specifically for people in labour. I’m not sure pregnancy food restrictions still apply when the baby is on its way out!”
“It was a little privately-owned OB-GYN clinic, but the costs were mostly covered by standard insurance! […] I paid some extra but what I paid was pretty standard for most hospitals in the area.”
In 2014, NPR shared a similar story of delicious-looking hospital meals from around the world, with Japan coming out on top. According to the article, Flickr user Annabelle Orozco visited Japan on a school study trip as a student at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy. One of their stops was a private Japanese hospital's terminal care ward in Osaka, where, each week, patients could select a favorite dish, and a nutritionist would tailor the food to adhere to the patients' dietary needs.
“Japanese pay close attention to details in the way they serve food,” she explained. “There are actually several rules related to colors, textures, amount of dishes that should be served at one point or another, size and dimension of the plates.”
