Prison food made me feel like an animal.
The same way a farmer
wants to maintain the animals just to maintain,
just so they can yield what they need from the animals,
that's how they treated us.
It's not a secret that prison food is gross,
but it's more than that.
The food served in prisons is making people sick, leaving them
with lasting ailments, chipping away at their mental health,
hurting their families and friends on the outside,
and harming the communities they return to.
Simply put, prison food is a public health crisis.
Eating food in prison was pretty degrading.
It's, like, lumpy.
It's—half the time, it gets cold by the time you get it.
They'll give you a tray of slop
with two slices of bread and maybe a fruit or something like that.
And sometimes, I couldn't eat it.
You know, I’d take a bite and have to spit it out.
This is Aiyuba Thomas, a formerly incarcerated graduate student
at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study.
He also does research for NYU’s Prison Education Program.
Aiyuba's experience with prison food reflects what studies show:
A typical meal in prison is high in sugar, refined carbs, and salt.
Studies have found prison food cooked in kitchens with rats and cockroaches.
Some food served is labeled 'not for human consumption,'
and 75% of participants in a study about eating behind bars
said they'd been served food that was spoiled or rotten.
The results of being served such low-quality food are unsurprising:
Incarcerated people are 6 times more likely than the general public
to become sick from a foodborne illness.
Additionally, many folks leave prison with long-term health issues
like diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, and anemia.
And the consequences aren't just physical.
There are certain nutrients, certain vitamins and minerals, that if the diet
is lacking in those critical nutrients— B12, other B vitamins, other minerals—
that can lead to brain fog, to increased anxiety,
to impaired decision-making, to increased hostility and aggression.
This is Leslie Soble.
She manages the Food in Prison Project at the national research center Impact Justice
and is the lead author on a nationwide study of food in prisons.
On top of the mental health
challenges incarcerated people can face as a result of poor quality food,
many people in prison already face additional struggles.
85% of people in prisons struggle with substance use.
And many have suffered some kind of trauma,
from abuse to neglect.
Innutritious, unappetizing, and sometimes inedible food only exacerbates these issues.
Trauma can actually impact the way that we process food in our bodies.
Trauma can cause toxic stress, which can actually disrupt the gut-brain circuitry.
It can damage your metabolism, and it can lead to different impacts,
such as not knowing when you're full
and increasing cravings for salty, sugary, fatty foods.
Additionally, for the over 80% of people who are incarcerated,
who struggle with substance use,
the typical prison diet can actually increase cravings for unhealthy substances,
along with salty, sugary, unhealthy foods, rather than helping
to disrupt that cycle and help heal the body from use of those substances.
Clearly, prison food is worsening existing health problems and creating new ones.
It seems pretty obvious that if we increased the quality of food,
increase the amount of actual nourishment that people were getting,
that health care costs would go down.
Unfortunately, there's not really a lot of data about this and not a lot of data
that's publicly available.
There is, however, ample evidence from outside prison
that eating nutrient-rich, whole foods saves money on medical treatments.
Even in [departments of corrections] that have
implemented heart-healthy diets or tried to improve nutrition,
a lot of those haven't collected the data
around how that has actually impacted health care costs.
In addition to there being no obvious financial incentives,
there's also no legal motivation.
Right now,
there is no national law that stipulates what can or can't be served in prisons.
Furthermore, prison kitchens in some states aren't even subjected
to external health inspections.
Yes, people who commit crimes are there to be punished,
but they are there to be rehabilitated.
That's the key.
Prison food isn't part of the rehabilitation process.
It actually sets you up for more roadblocks.
You should be able to come home from prison and
go run and play with your kids
and not have to go to doctors' appointments and
take medication because you have diabetes.
Punishment should stop somewhere.
The impact of unhealthy, unappetizing, and unsafe food goes beyond prison walls.
When a person is subjected to eat the food in prison,
it oftentimes causes a burden on the outside community.
Their family has to spend money,
drawing money from the household to support this person on the inside.
In addition to the costs family and friends on the outside incur for sending food packages,
they also face health care expenses when their loved ones are released.
When people leave prison and return back to society,
it's often found that they have a lot
of ailments and sicknesses that they did not know about.
Furthermore, people leaving prisons are often
walking back into households experiencing food insecurity,
which is linked to engaging in behaviors that increase the chance of rearrest.
In other words, bad food, both in and out of prison,
increases the likelihood of recidivism.
The food that's typically served in the prisons in this country
basically sends the message
to people that they're not worthy of care or that they're less than human.
And that message is reflecting the general thoughts in our society—
that people who are incarcerated, you know, aren't worthy
or that they're inherently bad because they have caused harm.
And I think some of it is just really reframing this idea
of how we think about people who are incarcerated.
You know, over 1 in 3 adult Americans
has had an immediate family member who has spent time in prison or jail.
So even if you haven't had someone in your life
who's been incarcerated, you probably know someone who does have a loved one
who's been incarcerated.
It's really time to think about how we approach prison food,
how we approach nourishing people, who, even if they have caused harm,
are still human beings and are still someone's loved ones.
The prison industrial complex is an extension of slavery.
When you are incarcerated,
you're told what to do, when to do it. You're told what to eat.
So the things that they give you
is food for slaves.
Clearly, prison food fails incarcerated people, their communities, and society at large.
But there are a few possible interventions that could help—
from improving food standards, to providing access to local produce and in-unit kitchenettes,
to teaching life skills around gardening and nutrition.
All of these solutions require political pressure, and pressure has to come from constituents.
People who aren't incarcerated have to see the humanity and value in incarcerated people.﻿
They have to understand that the prison industrial complex is designed for profit,
not rehabilitation.
And until that happens,
incarcerated people will continue to have their health and their dignity stripped away
meal by meal.