SICK kids at the Royal London have been getting a taster of the restaurants and cafes outside their hospital wards with the launch of a unique food-guide. Patients at the children s hospital in Whitechapel have been discovering the best places to eat in

SICK kids at the Royal London have been getting a taster of the restaurants and cafes outside their hospital wards with the launch of a unique food-guide.

Patients at the children's hospital in Whitechapel have been discovering the best places to eat in the area for those being treated and visiting the Royal London Hospital.

Together with a member of staff or their parents, the kids rated and reviewed around 20 restaurants and cafes to create the Whitechapel Food Guide.

And the guides, funded by the Barts and the London Charity through a �1,000 donation from the law firm Farrer & Co, are now available on the hospital wards.

The guides were launched last night at one of the kids' choice of cafes, Fresh in Whitechapel High Street.

Jacqui Cowlard, Clinical Nurse Specialist, who was behind the guide said: "Parents always ask us where they can go for a coffee or for lunch so we thought about what we could do to help them.

"Creating the guide was a way of engaging with the kids, getting them interested in food and allowing them to have a bit of normality in their lives.

"The patients get stuck on the wards so getting out to review these restaurants was the bit of the day they really looked forward to."

Eshrat Mahmood's five-year-old daughter Zaynab, who was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis when she was only seven months old, was involved in the reviewing.

The mother-of-three said: "Zaynab will not eat the hospital food as she says it has no taste. It gave her the chance to enjoy herself rather than being in the hospital."

The children's hospital also received a �13,000 donation from the investment bank Investec to pay for 14 lap tops and DVDs for the young patients.