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Promoting good nutritional care is everybody's business, and requires champions in the board room and at the bedside. Good nutrition and the meal experience are of vital importance for individuals recovering from illness, or for those who are at risk of malnutrition.

Not only is food necessary for life, but it is also a source of great pleasure, with important social, cultural and religious functions.

However as highlighted recently by Age UK in "Still Hungry to be Heard" we do not always get it right.

"Get Your 10 a Day! The Nursing Care Standards for Patient Food in Hospital" was developed as a Northern Ireland response to the RCN's Nutrition Now campaign.

Promoting Good Nutrition! A Strategy for Good Nutritional Care for Adults in all Care Settings in Northern Ireland, aims to build on Get Your 10 a Day to include all health and social care settings including peoples own homes. This will be achieved through the adoption and translation of the Council of Europe Alliance UK's 10 Key Characteristics which form the basis of good nutritional care.

Key to this process is outlining actions to support good care based on prevention, identification and management of malnutrition.

Whilst the term 'malnutrition', the clinically agreed national term, can encompass both over nutrition and under nutrition, for the purpose of this strategy it will be considered as 'under nutrition'.