I Ate The Worst Food In the World
The food at my local jail was worse than my Grandmother's terrible cooking. She is blind and deaf, can't smell or taste...and her food is much more edible than jail food.
I am a food lover and ironically I was in jail for a check I had bounced at the grocery store, my first meal in jail was one of the worst things I have tasted ... ever.
It was a scoop of cold instant rice on top of a half moon shaped meat patty sitting in a puddle of greyish brown goop called gravy. The entree was surrounded by a piece of cardboard tasting cornbread and some cooked greens. No salt or butter is used to make this food. The highlight of the tray was the dessert. two stale vanilla sandwich cookies.
Interestingly, we were served very similar looking greens 7 more times during the 9 days I was booked to stay at my local county jail. However, on one of those days, an inmate snuck salt into the greens and beans, and I ate them happily.
image By BEN BOTKIN LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Sometimes we inmates were served tiny portions of food that looked like it should be edible and even tasty, but, most times we were let down as soon as we took a bite.
I began sitting with the two pregnant girls at lunch. They were given two trays. I often traded them my entree for one trays worth of dessert or fruit, usually 1/2 of a small orange (two wedges) or two sandwich creme cookies. The two starving women would divvy up my tray and pile up their mushy fruit for me.
When I got out, I had no cash or credit/debit cards on me but a handful of change from my car bought me two tacos at Jack In the Box. I ate as if they were the best tasting thing I had ever had, even though, they are probably just a seasoned and fresher version of the taco-like substance that was served in jail. It didn't matter, those two greasy tacos tasted like FREEDOM with cheese.
Learn how to make Jack in the Box style Tacos at home
As soon as I got home, I hit up Google to see if anyone else had the same trouble swallowing the jail food.
Portion size was a chief complaint
From an article posted at the Marshall Project What's in a Prison Meal By ALYSIA SANTO and LISA IABONIProduced by ANDY ROSSBACK
Inmates at the Gordon County Jail in Calhoun, Ga. — according to a preliminary investigation by human rights attorneys last fall — are starving. The two meals a day weren't enough to sustain them, and some reportedly resorted to eating toothpaste and toilet paper. Inmates at the Montgomery County Jail in New York alleged that meager portions led to increased violence among the inmates; one inmate lost 90 pounds in less than six months. And a group of prisoners at the Schuylkill County Prison in Pennsylvania filed a federal civil rights lawsuit claiming the portions they received are “not even enough to fill a 5-year-old child.”
An inmate from San Quentin wrote on an online forum after posting a sample menu from the prison
"Of course there are discrepancies between menu and reality. The entries are subject to change, and some don’t look or taste like the menu claims to be. But generally, the food is agreeable, in quality and quantity."
This comment about the food being agreeable was not the norm. Most opinions I found were similar to my own.
I found that most jails and prisons have similar set menus and most of them hire a contractor to provide the ingredients. Our jail and several others nearby use the same local contractor, Five Star.
Excerpt from
Dishing up good food, savings: Walker County Jail switches to Five Star Correctional Services to supply inmate meals
By Cody Stark / News Editor cstark@itemonline.com Jun 28, 2015
“When we opened the jail we promised that we would do what we could to save money for the taxpayers,” Walker County Sheriff Clint McRae said. “After researching and speaking to other jails that use outside vendors, we found an opportunity cut operations costs. Using Five Star, we are looking at about $25,000 in cost savings a year and that is being conservative.
“There might be other ways we can save money down the road and we are looking into them.”
The county used to use two civilian employees, along with inmate labor, and make bids on food to prepare meals when the jail first opened last spring. Factoring in what the county was paying in salaries and benefits for those two employees, to provide three meals a day it cost the county $1.50 per meal per day for an average of 150 to 160 inmates.
Five Star provides three of its own employees to prepare the meals using the jail’s kitchen with the help of inmate labor. The vendor also supplies the food. - read more
Aramark is another one of the companies that services many correctional facilities but, it has gotten mixed reviews and received several complaints.
"The records show 65 instances where Philadelphia-based Aramark Correctional Services failed to provide food or ran out of it - usually the main course, such as hamburgers or chicken patties - while serving inmates, leading to delays and in some cases security concerns as inmates grew frustrated. Substitute items were provided in most cases." Read More Ohio Prisoners Complain Of Maggots In Food
related reading
- Aramark worker ordered prisoner to feed inmates at Michigan prison cake partially eaten by rodents
Most of the time, companies like Aramark will also provide the commissary or canteen items that the inmates can purchase.
Many inmates use creativity and survival instinct to create interesting food from commissary purchases
“In the prison setting, prisoners lose everything—their rights, belongings, their ability to move freely, and they’re at the complete mercy of prison guards. So food is amazingly important. Start serving lower quality food, serving smaller quantities—then you are creating significant safety problems.”- continue reading What it's like to eat Some of the Worst Prison Food In America
You begin to miss real food so badly that you will resort to things like this take on sweet and sour pork
This story comes from Lucky Peach #11: The All You Can Eat Issue.
Reporter enters prison to discuss food posted MARCH 24, 2015
So the inmates are eager to talk, if just to break up the monotony. And when you mention you’re here to write about food in prisons, it’s like ramming a car into a fire hydrant and watching the water gush skyward.
“Why don’t you grab one and eat with us, bro? And you tell us what you think,” says Shaun Kimbrough, who’s wheelchair-bound and serving a five-year sentence for aggravated battery. “It’s gonna hurt your stomach, but we’re used to it.”
The Westville cafeteria, or “chow hall,” is where the state of Indiana spends $1.239 to feed each prisoner each meal, three times a day. They line up single file, shuffling forward until they reach a waist-height hole in the wall. Every five seconds, a hardened plastic tray of compartmentalized food slides into view and is quickly picked up. The transaction between server and inmate is an anonymous relationship, a food glory hole.
Today is fish sandwich day at Westville, and conspiracy theories abound.
“They know y’all coming, that’s why they served fish,” Kimbrough says. Apparently fish is one of the better-tasting offerings the prisoners see, in the way that canker sores are the best kind of ulcers. “That’s a top-notch tray right there. But that fish patty, it ain’t meat. It’s just breading.”
The fish patty sits atop three slices of white bread—two to make a sandwich, and the extra slice presumably to meet the 2,500 to 2,800 daily calories as recommended by the American Correctional Association for adult males under fifty. There’s also a corn muffin, steamed carrots and green beans, plus mac and cheese sloshing around in a puddle of bright orange water. Some trays hold elbow pasta, others have corkscrew. Beverage is a Styrofoam cup of powdered tropical punch.
The most coveted items on the tray are the salt and pepper packets. Every person I surveyed, without fail, used the word “bland” in describing chow hall food. Rather than prepare separate trays for inmates with high cholesterol or blood pressure, the kitchen serves low-sodium meals for the entire prison population. Even with the added salt, though, it tastes like a vague notion of lunch, with all the flavor and pleasure of food eaten one hour after dental surgery.
Says Thomas Powell, who’s serving time for drug dealing: “You’re salting something with no flavor to begin with. It’s tasteless. It’s horrible. It’s repetitive day after day.” Powell brings packets of powdered ramen soup seasoning to sprinkle over his food. He is not alone in his desire for flavor—up and down the rows of steel tabletops, inmates pull out bottles of hot sauce they bring from the dorms, dousing their breaded fish and three slices of white bread.
The next most frequently utilized food descriptor is “mush.” Food texture is difficult to retain when most meals are prepared several days before service—cooked, then quickly refrigerated in an industry-standard practice called blast-chilling. Reheating it, workers in the production kitchen claim, turns everything into a one-note texture more suitable for nursing homes.
Two entrées exemplify mush: goulash and chop suey.
On days these dishes are served, many inmates will skip their meals altogether. Hearing them describe the dishes is like listening to grandpa recall war atrocities he witnessed: spoken with a heavy sigh, best left in the past.
On goulash: “Noodles in red sauce … his tray may have meat, mine may not … the noodles have been overcooked so much, it’s compacted together so it’s like mush. You try to pick up one noodle and eighteen go along for the ride.”
Two inmates have a conversation explaining chop suey:
“It’s a bunch of cabbage and water.”
“That’s it. It may have a few grains of rice.”
“… And corn if you’re lucky.”
“See, in mine, I don’t remember corn.”
An inmate named James Rogers speaks more broadly about dining in incarceration: “I’ve been here for six years. It has never changed. You came here on a good day. If you came out when they served the other stuff, you’d be horrified. We have no choice but to eat it.”
I ask Warren Christian, in Westville the last five years for robbery, how long it took him to adjust to prison food.
“Years. It took years. Some people never get accustomed to it.” What was the turning point?
“Finally accepting the situation you’re in. That you’re not going anywhere until they release you.”
First Hand experience from actual prisoners
Over the years, due to budget constraints, the quality of food provided by the CDCR to inmates has gotten worse. We used to get three hot meals a day. Today, we get two hot meals and a sack lunch. The lunch contains a mystery meat which stinks; not even the cats and seagulls will eat it, and they normally eat anything. To appease prisoners, they allow us to purchase food items at the prison canteen once a month and provide forms to order food items from outside-approved vendors in 30-pound boxes every three months. We can even buy hot pots to use to cook. From a crafty inmate, you can even obtain a “hot plate” to fry food in. Ordering food from vendors or at the prison canteen has become big business. If a prisoner has money, he certainly has a choice in what to eat every night. If a prisoner is poor, he has nothing coming. He must eat chow hall food. Into my 13th year of imprisonment, I’ve noticed a major change in my life. My circle of friends in free society has dwindled. I’m usually broke, struggling to accumulate canteen items so I don’t have to go to chow. I earn only $15 a month from my prison job as a landscaper. I spend it all, every penny. One thing is always certain in the lives of prisoners — when the bell rings for chow, a hot meal will always await us. And it doesn’t matter what the menu says, whatever mystery meat it is, it all tastes the same — it’s processed in a prison somewhere in the state, made especially for our salivating taste buds.
A Week of Prison Food -- June 25, 2011 Paul Modrowski - On the Inside
Paul Modrowski is a prisoner in Stateville Prison in Crest Hill, Illinois. Paul was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole at age 18 on an "accountability" theory for supposedly lending his car to a friend who supposedly murdered a man-- although the friend was acquitted by a different jury. Paul has been in maximum security prison for over 20 years. Paul has autism. read his archived blog here
The food served to inmates in the Illinois Department of Corrections has become progressively worse, and the portions smaller. When I first arrived at Pontiac maximum-security penitentiary in 1995, the food was surprisingly good, especially compared to that at Cook County Jail where I spent two years prior to my trial. The food in prison was incredibly much better in the 1990s, however, as the State of Illinois has accumulated enormous debts, administrators have tried to squeeze the costs of housing 50,000 prisoners. Medical care, educational programs, detail salaries, mail service, clothing, and building maintenance are some of the areas with major budget cuts. In this journal entry, however, I will focus on the food we are given daily at Stateville.
Breakfast is served always in the middle of the night. About 3 a.m., trays are passed out to the inmates. Every Sunday we are given a biscuit and gravy, along with grits or oatmeal. At one time, the prison served scrambled eggs and two large fluffy buttermilk biscuits with real beef gravy. The gravy had onion and chopped green peppers in it, and it went well with the biscuits. We were also given a hearty portion of oatmeal with packages of sugar, butter, and jelly. However, now prisoners are given a tiny flat biscuit, thrown into some distasteful soy gravy drool. With this we are given about a half cup of grits. We are never given eggs, butter or jelly anymore, and packs of sugar were taken away a long time ago.
Will Steel, 5 years inmate is US Fed prison
9.8k Views • Featured in Thought Catalog
As others posted, it depends on where you are designated. One thing is certain: regardless of where you, are the food is terrible. Think lowest bidder won contracts. Expired and waste. Over the years I spent in Federal Prison, I learned that food was always a focal point of inmates concerns and contention. I had close to a year in city and county jails before being designated to prison. City and county jails are terrible and barely sustainable. Usually breakfast was cereal and milk. There is typically a restriction with respect to sugar because it is the main ingredient for making wine. I ate a lot of bologna and cheese sandwiches and beans, and little fresh fruit in jails. Federal prison in MS was horrendous. Prior to arriving I had heard that the food would be bad, but I had no idea how bad it could be until I arrived. I took a one week job in the kitchen and saw firsthand what the saying "garbage in, garbage out" really meant. Boxes of meat were labeled "NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION." This is probably the only place where you will see that label; regardless, the food would end up on the serving line. Think about receiving the absolute worst cuts of meat, waste meat that looks so bad that it makes you nauseous to look at. Meat with veins and gristle is the norm. Fruit is close to expiration and the point where they would not be sold in a grocery. In 2003 or 2004 things got so bad that it resulted in a peaceful riot and a two-week lockdown. The case was related to a warden who was understood to be diverting funds from food service to either his bonus or other places it was not supposed to go. Things were so bad in an already tough prison that inmates who were working in UNICOR organized and walked out. This caused an immediate response by administration to lock down the prison. They put us in a two-week lockdown while our demands were negotiated. While we had little bargaining power, the administration made sure it was tough on us. They went through each unit and shook down all lockers, removing all food that had been bought off the commissary so that we could not eat out of our lockers. We were fed bologna sandwiches at each meal and restricted to no movement outside of our unit. Medical would come to units; all visitation was cancelled. After two weeks, the situation got the attention of DC and a negotiation was made to get UNICOR employees back to work and kitchen detail back in kitchen. The warden was replaced and we got a new warden, she was not much better, slightly better food for a moment at least. - read more at Quora.com What foods do Inmates eat while in prison
This author decided to eat what prisoners were served for one week in her article 1-Week Prison Food Diet Reveals Problems With Inmate Meals: Low Cost, Bad Taste, And Very Little Nutrition
"I am acutely aware of the lamented tone throughout my food journal. Mimicking the diet of incarcerated inmates had taken its toll on both my body and mind. The entire week I gave my food dirty looks, stare downs, and fork pokes. I felt like a snob. The food drastically affected my ability to concentrate, exercise, sleep, and eat. And there was something deeply degrading about my inability to choose. Even the thought of limitation unnerved me. But from what I could ascertain from Koster, this was the way life functioned during incarceration and had been since the prison system was initially introduced nearly 200 years ago." read more and see a photo journal of the prison food eating experiment
If you are really out of control in prison, you may be served Nutraloaf -
Nobody likes this stuff. It is even worse than the food served on the trays- according to everyone I have asked
