Probably one of our most nutrition-critical clients is our hospitals. Providing nutrition analysis for hospital menus is such an important task in need of incredible accuracy due to the types of patients that are seen in a hospital throughout any given day. The hospital food served in cafeteria serves more than just staff. Hospital food provides nutrition for patients who have come to the hospital due to an injury, in need of surgery, those who are fighting chronic disease, and even small children who are in the middle of crucial growth periods. The list goes on and on.

These hospital menus, typically created by the hospital’s nutrition staff (Registered Dietitian and team), are required to meet a number of criteria in order to properly nourish everyone under hospital care. For this reason, we tend to provide nutrition analysis for hospital menus all over the  United States, too many happy nutrition staffers and their patients.

How Does Nutrition Analysis for Hospital Menus Work?

Our platform is built on a combination of 2 important tools: a nutrient calculator and an ingredient database. The ingredient databases provide the nutrition information for hundreds of thousands of ingredients used to create recipes for menus. What this means, is that if you were to create a spaghetti dinner for your menu, the ingredient database would contain the information about the noodle type that you used (spaghetti), the tomatoes, marinara sauce, and any seasonings you added. Then, the nutrition calculator portion of the platform would calculate the ingredient information that the ingredient database supplies.

Database Types

The USDA provides an ingredient database that is full of all of the general ingredients you can use to create a recipe. And the good news is, the foundation of our ingredient database is pulled directly from the USDA! But in the case that you need to add an ingredient that isn’t on that list, you have the ability to add your own ingredients to include in your nutrition analysis for your hospital menu. To add an ingredient to your “My Ingredient” database, simply have the nutrition label (or nutrition report) for the ingredient you would like to add. Once it is in your very own database in your MenuCalc account, the nutrition calculator portion of our software platform can then calculate your unique ingredient into your nutrition analysis. It’s that simple.

Nutrients Calculated

The nutrition analysis for hospital menus includes 2 types of nutrients: macronutrients and micronutrients. Macro-nutrients are the larger nutrients within food or ingredient and micro-nutrients are the smaller nutrients like vitamins and minerals. See below:

Macronutrients

• Fat
• Carbohydrate
• Protein

Micronutrients

• Minerals: Calcium, Iron, Magnesium
• Fat-Soluble Vitamins: A, D, E & K
• Water Soluble Vitamins: B & C

The MenuCalc platform goes beyond the basics that you would see on a nutrition label to provide detailed reporting for Dietitians and other nutrition professionals who might need a deeper dive into the nutrition analysis for their hospital menu. In any given recipe you can perform a nutrition analysis to see results on the following nutrients:

Any professional can use MenuCalc to perform a nutrition analysis for hospital menus or any other professional nutrition format that requires a deep dive into the nutrition reporting for a meal or recipe being served to the public.

Nutrition Consulting for Hospital Food Menus

Perhaps you are a Registered Dietitian for a hospital and have an overwhelming patient docket? We see this often. While it’s good to be able to use MenuCalc in an ongoing fashion, having another professional import all of your foundational recipes can be very helpful. For this reason, we have our own Registered Dietitians and Nutritionists on staff that are highly skilled to perform your nutrition analysis for your hospital menus or any other meal plans that you would like analyzed.

With MenuCalc, you can either perform your own nutrition analysis or have one of our nutrition professionals give you a head start by inputting your foundational recipes. The choice is yours.

We know that a lot of recipes on meal plans and/or menus tend to be foundational or nutritionally complete. Because of this, the recipes remain reliable and easy to repurpose. MenuCalc makes it easy to complete your first major analysis. After that, you have the necessary tools to perform any subsequent analysis or make changes to existing recipes. You just input those changes into your MenuCalc account and the system analyzes them. MenuCalc happily performs this task for restaurants, hospitals, hotels, and even independent nutrition professionals. If nutrition consulting sounds like the right plan for you instead of a DIY input/nutrition analysis option — we want to help!

Any route you would like to go is possible with MenuCalc. Choices include simple DIY options via a nutrition calculator + ingredient database(s) combo. On the other hand, MenuCalc offers professional input from nutritionists for your foundational recipes. Nutrition analysis can benefit your hospital menu, or for any menu, and we want to help! Contact us to learn more.