The waft of boiled cabbage coming from the serving trolley in ward 7F was quite overwhelming. "Some vegetables don't regenerate very well," Trevor Payne, head of facilities, apologises.

Regenerate, in non-catering speak, means travel and reheat, and as all the 1,665 meals served every day at Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital are brought in from a factory in Colchester, it's commonly used.

A vegetable curry and dessert, hospital-style

I was there to discover if hospital food is really as bad as everyone makes out. The Government has just launched a £40m food improvement package and has brought in top celebrity chefs, food critic Loyd Grossman, and mass caterers such as Railtrack and British Airways' consultants, to dream up new menus to improve hospital food nationwide.

A recent survey found that up to 60 per cent of hospital food is wasted because patients find it so unpalatable, which means their medical progress is hampered and they stay in hospital longer.

The new regime will include 40 new signature dishes such as beef masala with potato bhaji, braised lamb in cider with parsley dumplings, fricasee of chicken in wholegrain mustard and tarragon sauce, seafood pasta with fresh dill and parmesan and salad of spinach, tuna, egg and mung beans.

Puddings will include sticky toffee pudding, posh pear in chocolate crumble and vanilla mousse with fruit preserve. All in all, it will improve the taste and nutritional value of hospital food.

The JR's catering managers and contractors are fiercely loyal and proud of the service they provide and boast that there is only a 15 per cent wastage there.

"We have nothing to hide," Mr Payne says, yet my requests to talk to patients about the food were declined.

"Hospital food is the butt of endless jokes and people make preconceptions about it when they haven't even tasted it," says Nicola Jones, the facilities monitoring officer, handing me the results of a recent survey conducted around the Oxford wards.

The comments include several from old ladies thanking staff for looking after them, but "too much mince" and "the lentil loaf was inedible" were just a few of the moist tit-bits that prove hospital food still has a long way to go.

Unfortunately, lentil loaf was my lunch too - with mash, broccoli and swede. I swallowed hard and managed to eat most of the stodgy offerings. The apple crumble and custard was good, but I couldn't eat this stuff every day.

Yet I wasn't surprised. You try cooking 4,074 meals and serving them in four different hospitals in Oxfordshire every day, 365 days a year and then see how tasty your meals are.

That includes catering for vegetarians, ethnic meals, special dietary requirements, plus a constantly changing clientele, from babies to pensioners, who disappear for checks, scans and operations without warning, and a budget that only allows £3 per patient per day.

The John Radcliffe is the only hospital that contracts its catering out, the others still cook in-house, but their menus are much the same.

Yet the catering managers have welcomed the new package with open arms. However much they cover up their limitations with hospital jargon, they know the food needs improving.

"I must admit the present service has run its course and the patients have the right to eat good food in good surroundings with proper cutlery," Mr Payne says.

The staff all eat in a separate canteen, munching on baguettes and curry, anything to avoid the stewed broccoli and cottage pie on offer to the patients.

But the new improvement project will mean a huge input for the JR's catering staff. The emphasis is being changed from a main meal at lunchtime to the evening, to fit in with current lifestyles. As well as more choice, it intends to be more flexible than the current rigid meal-time system.

"People graze during the day, eating sandwiches at lunchtime, and then have a big meal when they go home in the evening. So that is what we are trying to copy. We want to be more flexible," says Michael Head, the contractor's general catering manager.

The new 24-hour catering option will involve a snack menu, such as chicken tikka masala and all day breakfast, as well as crisps and chocolate, for anyone who misses the main meal or is still hungry. It is high calorific food, to aid recuperation and boost strength and energy.

The changes will also involve employing additional staff and equipment and implementing a totally new system, all of which takes time.

"It's not going to be easy but we knew the changes were coming so we have been working together for some time to prepare for them," Mr Payne says. "We only heard the whole plan last week so we are still trying to digest what they mean to us," he adds.

Hospitals nationally are expected to provide one of the new signature dishes for every meal by August, and all 40 of them by the end of the year.

The catering company has already been working with the celebrity chefs to see whether the meals they are proposing can be mass produced and easily followed.

Working alongside the catering team, the hospital is also employing dietetic helpers and healthcare assistants to ensure that the patients who have ordered food, eat it, after discovering that many have the food put in front of them, yet are too ill to actually feed themselves, reach it or even cut it.

"It's not in anyone's interests to put food in front of a patient and then take it away uneaten," Mr Payne says.

When the changes are implemented, catering will become a key indicator of the hospital's performance. It's a top priority and what the patients say will be paramount.

"Food is going to be viewed now as part of the therapy and the changes need to be achieved and then sustained," Mr Payne says.

So thankfully, lentil loaf will be a thing of the past. I have been invited back in six months' time to try out the new menu - a proposition I am much more keen to accept.