"It matters a great deal whether you want to do things properly or not." How do Romanian patients actually eat in hospitals? What are the differences between the menus compared to those in hospitals in Austria and Spain?

Thursday, Oct 2, 2025

Hospital food quality varies across Romania and Europe; some facilities offer excellent nutrition despite low state funding.

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[This is an automatically generated summary, for reference only]

The quality of hospital food has improved recently, according to Radu Gănescu, president of Romania’s largest patient association, although negative examples still surface across Europe. The article, part of an international journalistic consortium called Pulse, discusses these issues. While the state allocates 22 lei daily for a hospitalized patient’s three meals in Romania, the actual quality varies greatly depending on hospital management and funding sources. Some hospitals, like Maternitatea GiuleÈ™ti, manage to provide high-quality, personalized nutrition by supplementing the state funds through local authorities and having their own kitchens. Similarly, Spitalul de Copii Marie Curie manages good meals within the allocated budget. In contrast, some smaller hospitals struggle with lower quality menus. The text also mentions similar food complaints in other European countries, such as Spain, and briefly compares Romanian hospital meals to those served at Hietzing Hospital in Vienna.


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PULSE is an initiative for cross-border collaborative journalism in Europe co-funded by the European Commission under Grant Agreement n. PO 4500158093.

PULSE is an initiative coordinated by OBCT that has been promoting intensive journalistic cross-border collaborations in Europe since 2024. Its main aim is to help strengthen the European public sphere by reporting on and telling stories from new and diverse perspectives.

At the heart of PULSE are 10 leading national news outlets (Delfi – Lithuania, Deník Referendum – Czechia, Der Standard – Austria, EfSyn – Greece, El Confidencial – Spain, Gazeta Wyborcza – Poland, HotNews – Romania, HVG – Hungary, Il Sole 24 Ore – Italy, Mediapool – Bulgaria) and three transnational organisations, including OBCT , n-ost and Voxeurop .

Additional outlets and journalists are involved as associate partners, including EUobserver , Føljeton (Denmark), H-Alter (Croatia), Levila (Estonia), Rubryka (Ukraine), and The Journal Investigates (Ireland).

PULSE is driven by a sort of virtual transnational newsroom made up of journalists from all the publications involved. It collaboratively produces new journalistic content on European issues on a daily basis, coming in many different languages. The editorial output amounts to over a thousand publications per year, mostly in article form.

PULSE also runs 4 thematic networks open to any European journalist interested in crucial issues such as EU enlargement, relations between the EU and other global powers, the EU’s green transition, or media and the information society. These networks function as online communities and periodically publish calls for pitches.