Making care home food better
The Food Chain
BBC
4.7 • 545 Ratings
🗓️ 20 August 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The quality of food in care homes for the elderly can be underwhelming. Ruth Alexander talks to the people highlighting the issue and finding ways to bring nutrition and comfort back on the menu.
Dr Lisa Portner, a medical doctor and researcher at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charite, outlines the inadequate diet offered by three nursing homes she studied in Germany.
Australian restaurateur and food writer Maggie Beer tells how she came to set up the Maggie Beer Foundation, which aims to research the issues, raise awareness and offer culinary training.
Ronald Marshall explains the simple ways he found to help carers understand the food preferences of his mum, who was diagnosed with dementia in 2020.
And Navjot Gill-Chawla recounts the conversations she had with South-Asian Canadians living with dementia and their families, as a PhD Candidate in Public Health at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. When the subject of care homes came up, she says food was uppermost in their minds.
If you would like to get in touch with the show, please email: thefoodchain@bbc.co.uk
And if you'd like to try Maggie's brownie recipe featured in the show, you can find it in full on our website.
Producer: Beatrice Pickup
(Photo: Two cooks in a care home kitchen are smiling as they prepare a tray of brigh orange roast pumpkin. Credit: Sam Kroepsch)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm no longer ravenous. I'll no longer eat until I fall asleep. The Hunger Game, a new |
| 0:06.2 | five-part series exploring the meteoric rise of weight loss drugs. It's been an incredible story |
| 0:11.1 | with these drugs. The uptake, the amount of product that's been sold, the amounts of money is cost. |
| 0:16.2 | What the drugs do, how they work, and the knock-on effects of their widespread use. |
| 0:20.5 | We'll be sitting here in three years' time going, oh, it caused problems that we're now going |
| 0:25.3 | to have to fix. The Hunger Game with me, Professor Gilesio. Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.5 | The quality of meals in care homes for the elderly can be underwhelming. |
| 0:38.2 | Food that was so unattractive to look at had no scent at all. |
| 0:44.0 | It was food that I would never want to eat myself in a million years. |
| 0:48.9 | And it matters. |
| 0:50.1 | The situation is completely unsatisfactory. |
| 0:52.4 | Maybe a quarter of residents in nursing homes |
| 0:55.0 | are affected by or threatened by malnutrition. |
| 0:59.6 | In this week's edition of the food chain from the BBC World Service with me, Ruth Alexander, |
| 1:05.1 | I'm talking to the people who've been highlighting the issue. |
| 1:07.7 | You have a right to get what you want for your loved one. |
| 1:13.1 | And coming up with delicious sounding solutions. You wouldn't think that chocolate and |
| 1:17.4 | battery to go together, but believe me, it does. It's magnificent. To bring proper nutrition |
| 1:22.5 | and enjoyment back to meal times. She would take one bite of the food and she would close her eyes and hum. |
| 1:33.3 | When I started looking into this, I was a bit shocked to see that there's not really any data out on this. |
| 1:40.0 | You know, you cannot find anything on the quality of the food. |
| 1:43.5 | This is Lisa Pertner, a medical doctor and researcher at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.