Experts Design Week Of Balanced, Plant-Based Meals For Dutch Hospitals
The menu template includes plant-based versions of high-protein, popular dishes such as overnight oats, pancakes, omelette, quiche, casserole, curry, and cake.
“Future research should focus on real-world implementation, including patient acceptance, and actual intake in relation to personalized requirements in daily clinical practice.”
The experts developed and evaluated fully plant-based hospital meals for “nutritional adequacy, palatability, cost-effectiveness, and feasibility” within sustainable food policy frameworks. The seven-day menu they created could be used as a “practical blueprint” for hospitals to achieve the 40/60 ratio of animal protein to plant protein by 2030, as required by the Netherlands’ Green Deal on Sustainable Healthcare.
The 16-person team behind the research included chefs from Amsterdam University Medical Center (UMC) and collaborating companies, dietitians, a medical doctor, hospital facility service staff, and product and R&D specialists. They carried out a multidisciplinary, co-creative study between April and December 2025.
The team chose, cooked, tasted, and reviewed forty recipes, and turned the 30 highest-rated options into one week’s worth of daily menus. When rating the recipes, the team prioritized dishes featuring high protein content, good palatability, appropriate portion sizes, realistic costs, and practical feasibility.
The menus provide 90 – 97 g of protein per day and cost from €10.50 to €12.30.
What’s on the menu?
Dishes include a soy-based quark bowl, overnight oats, hazelnut pancakes, chickpea and paprika sandwich, spinach and soy mince pie, veggie omelette, eggplant pilaf with bean cassoulet, chickpea curry, and carrot banana cake.
The team wrote, “This study demonstrates that fully plant-derived meals can provide adequate protein, be palatable, cost-effective, and feasible for clinical implementation.” They added, “Future research should focus on real-world implementation, including patient acceptance, and actual intake in relation to personalized requirements in daily clinical practice.”
The European Journal of Nutrition published the experts’ study in June.
‘High levels of diner satisfaction’
Earlier this year, Sodexo UK & Ireland and its client partner Nuffield Health announced that they have reduced food emissions across 35 hospitals by 22 percent after making plant-based foods the default option.
Sodexo recorded “high levels of diner satisfaction” throughout the program’s initial one-year pilot. The company noted that the amount of meat served per patient fell by 14 percent, while plant protein increased by nearly 50 percent.
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