Dietaries in maternity hospitals.

Several comprehensive studies of hospital feeding have been planned to show as precisely as possible the nutritive value of representative diets provided in hospitals for patients and staff. The Scientific Advisory Committee of the Department of Health for Scotland has been carefully examining the problem of hospital diets and has made surveys and will publish a report in due course. The purpose of this survey, which was carried out under the aegis of the SubCommittee on Nutrition of the Departmeit of Health for Scotland, was to determine the nutritive value of diets provided to nursing mothers while in hospital. Fifteen hospitals were visited during the period February to August 1945; 8 were voluntary hospitals, and, of these, 2 were solely maternity hospitals; 5 were local authority hospitals, and, of these, 4 formed parts of general hospitals; and 2 were E.M.S. hospitals, both of these dealing only with maternity cases. Except for the north-west area of Scotland, the hospitals, urban and rural, were representative of the maternity hospital service in Scotland. The kitchens were of various sizes, the smallest catering for some 60 persons (staff and patients), the largest for 2,000. The results of the surveys show that there was no correlation between the dietary standard andthe type of hospital, its size and location or the season of the year when the survey was made.