Figure 1

The use of food supply resources. The use of food supply resources with and without the employment of nutritional and healthcare assistants. This figure recapitulates Tables 4 to 7. The left-hand column shows how the use of financial resources is distributed on control wards and participating wards before the employment of the nutritional and healthcare assistants. The right-hand column shows how the use of financial resources is distributed on the participating wards after five months' employment of the nutritional and healthcare assistants. The data related to surplus in the food budget are shown in Tables 4 to 6. The data related to the amount of food waste are shown in Table 3. The part of the budget spent on food served to the patients is estimated on the basis of these figures. Plate waste and food eaten by staff members are not taken into account. In the calculations, it is presumed that food waste of the various types of food is weighted equally in terms of expenses. The employment of the nutritional and healthcare assistants results in a surplus of 20% in relation to the food budget and 18% food wastage. Without the assistants the amount in ordered food increases about 20% with 66% food wastage.