Remembering back, hospital food has a taste unlike any other.
I don’t know what exactly it is but you never encounter that taste anywhere else (fortunately).
I ate it but it was definitely different.
I’m diabetic, so when I go into the hospital, what do they do? Stick me on a how fat, high carb diet. I ask for real eggs and bacon. No, egg beaters and turkey sausage. And pancakes with margarine and syrup. And orange juice. “But that will spike my blood sugar!” “We’ll give you a bigger dose of insulin.” Let me have a regular diet minus carbs and I won’t need the insulin.
It’s primarily due to the lack of seasoning, if you are sick enough to be in the hospital hopefully recovering the last thing they want the food to do is delay the recovery.
That means no salt, sugar, pepper or any other seasoning to enhance the flavor of the food
At least for me I rarely use salt as a seasoning but almost always use seasoning and often times pepper flakes or hot sauce take all that away and the food is bland and tastes completely different
It depends on the hospital. Specifically, on whether the doctors eat there too.
In suburban/rural hospitals where there isn’t anyplace nearby, and doctors and administrators eat in the cafeteria, it can be fairly good.