NOW that the NHS has moved up the list of priorities for the electorate, the standard of food needs to be looked at. With more and more of us getting older the stark reality is that at some point we are going to be spending a spell or two in hospital.

When we do we expect to be given the utmost standard of care and to be looked after as if we were at home. With nursing improving, and friendly wards reappearing left right and centre it looks as if hospital care may finally be going in the right direction.

There is one drawback which has always blighted any stay - the food. The meals provided in hospitals are leaving our elderly population dangerously close to malnutrition, they are unappetising, unappealing and unsustainable. Incredibly six out of 10 patients say families or friends are forced to bring in food because that supplied by the NHS is of such poor quality.

A whopping 50 per cent of hospital food is thrown away yearly because patients cannot and in many cases will not eat the meals provided. Those figures mean 13 million meals a year are binned, this simply cannot and should not be allowed to happen, not in this day and age.

Andrew Nutt Heolddu Rd Bargoed