Above: Dietary workers prepare the 945 trays that go out with each meal service.
April 23, 2026
LHSC is not only London's Largest Employer, but also one of London’s busiest kitchens. Today, we celebrate Team LHSC’s Patient Food Services, who reached an incredible milestone serving over one million meals in 2025!
The Patient Food Services team at LHSC consists of over 130 professionals who work hard to feed each patient every single meal throughout their stay. From the youngest patients in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit to adult inpatients and everyone in between, Patient Food Services continues to serve patients high quality meals tailored to their needs — providing approximately 945 trays per meal.
Patient Food Services 2025 Recap:
- Served 1,036,204 million meals
- Built approximately 945 trays at each meal
- Accommodated 180 different diets
- Prepared 103,376 bottles and syringes for infant feeding
- Provided special menus for over a dozen holidays
- Completed 3,650 hours of dishwashing
Dining at LHSC: the patient experience
To ensure meals in hospital are as enjoyable as possible, patient meals are regularly served on a ceramic plate with stainless-steel cutlery, providing a more home-like feeling.
“Real dishes and metal cutlery make a big difference to our patients,” says Dietary Worker Kim Boyd.
Real dishware also brings the added benefit of environmental sustainability. Every real dining set means fewer disposables. In fact, Patient Food Services completed nearly 3,650 hours of dishwashing time in 2025 — that’s 10 hours a day!
Personalized meals enhance care
In addition to the comfort and sustainability of real dinnerware, LHSC’s Patient Food Services offers a large variety of food options, serving over 180 therapeutic, allergen, texture modified and culturally inclusive diets. Each patient has a menu customized to them with multiple options for every meal of the day.
Part of what makes this personalization possible is the CBORD software Patient Food Services uses to enhance patient care. The software runs the dietary restrictions or preferences for each patient and pulls their appropriate meal choices.
“If you require a low sodium diet, and you have other allergies or preferences such as gluten free, these diets are recognized in the food services software, which provides a menu with choices tailored to you,” shares Registered Dietitian Krista Peraza.
A new patient centred enhancement that has recently been introduced is the addition of carbohydrate and fibre values on the tray ticket for patients on a diabetic diet. This helps the patient make an informed decision about how much insulin they will need to take.
Additionally, patients can work directly with clinicians during mealtime, learning how to match their insulin to food intake in real-time with every meal. Having a safe and controlled environment to learn about their meal-time needs is an invaluable part of care.
Patient Food Services is continually asking how meal service can further enhance patient care.
In matters of taste
While the software helps determine what meals are best for patients based on their specific diets, LHSC staff have personally tasted each meal option the software pulls from. Every product is tested prior to being added to the menu.
Dietitians and Operational Specialists work tirelessly to design menus that offer variety, provide comfort food, are appealing and take into consideration local and made in Canada products.
Menus change seasonally and based on product availability, such as using local strawberries and asparagus in the summer months. Before each product can make it onto the menu, it is thoroughly vetted through taste testing panels that include dietary staff and other health professionals like Clinical Dietitians, Dietetic Assistants, and Speech Language Pathologists. Together, they determine if new food options are compliant with a wide range of diets, taste good, look good and heat well.
As Patient Food Services’ Manager, Lindsay Crow, describes, “there is so much thought that goes into planning all food served to LHSC patients.”
Customizing the smallest meals
In the same way that Patient Food Services carefully curates food for adults, they also do so for LHSC’s smallest patients. In addition to over a million adult trays, the Patient Food Services department prepared thousands of infant feedings last year.
In fact, in 2025 alone, Patient Food Services prepared 103,376 individual syringes and bottles for infant feedings.
Patient Food Services has precise processes where dedicated Nutrition Technicians store, fortify, and prepare breastmilk and formula in a specialized preparation room.
Part of what makes the preparation of infant feeds so unique is that Patient Food Services works with Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Dietitians and other health care professionals to provide individualized feeds including, fortified breastmilk, and formula as well donor milk where appropriate.
“The Nutrition Technicians work hard to ensure they can prepare the most up to date order for breastmilk and formula feeds helping to ensure the infants receive the nutrition they need.” explains Laura Harries, Coordinator Patient Food Services.
Patient Food Services takes pride in caring for everyone’s nutrition at LHSC, from the smallest neonates to geriatric patients, and that pride is seen across the one million meals they served last year, along with each meal served today.
Congratulations to Patient Food Services on this milestone and thank you for the variety of ways in which you ensure LHSC meals encourage healing and provide comfort!