Prominent among the changes in the health care industry over the past few decades is an increase in the use of technology to standardize hospital processes. Such newly standardized processes include food and feeding. The ways in which the hospital system exerts control over patients, the power relationships found within hospitals, and the effects of hospitalization on the patient, all are illustrated in an extreme manner by the food practices therein. No other aspect of the hospital experience has such wide-ranging implications for the individual. This article explores how this occurs and how it is exemplified even more dramatically in the case of artificial tube feeding. There may be a change in the power relationships during end-of-life care in hospital, and again nutrition may be a focus for this. Food may also be a powerful means by which the detrimental effects of hospitalization can be resisted or subverted.
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