Can prison food be cruel and unusual punishment?

by Emily Matchar, Posted Jun 27th 2008 @ 2:00PM

There's been a lot of talk lately about what's unconstitutional and what's not, but Slate's got a question the Founding Father's never thought of: Can prison food be unconstitutionally bad?

Apparently there's a prison food so disgusting it's been the subject of numerous lawsuits. Nutraloaf, or Nutri-loaf, is a combination of vegetables, cheese, bread and raisins that can be eaten without utensils by prisoners who can't be trusted with knives. It looks, to put it indelicately, like someone ate Thanksgiving dinner, regurgitated it into a square pan, then froze and sliced it. It's often served to inmates who have misbehaved, a culinary equivalent of solitary confinement.

Prisoners in at least seven states have sued, claiming that Nutraloaf is a cruel and unusual punishment. They've lost. The Slate writer makes his own Nutraloaf, following recipes from several states, and declares California's meat-filled version the best.

So there you go kids, another reason to stay out of jail!

Source

Filed Under: Food Oddities, Food News
Tags: america, gross, Nutraloaf, oddities, prison food

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

6-27-2008 @11:39PM Evans said... I would like to point out that although food preparation is monitored by the US Dept of Health it is usually doled out to the individual counties where there is a greater chance of corruption in the inspections and reporting.

Also it is very curious that while the food preparation is monitored the serving enviroment is not. So when you are incarcerated whether it be in city or county jail, the food can be basically be served to you on the floor.
When you are placed in a 6ft cell with a stainless steel toilet and that is where you also eat, you are potentially ingesting the viral microbes of a thousand other inmates bodily wastes.

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6-28-2008 @4:56PM Candi said... Prison is meant to be a punishment. Nutraloaf was developed so that the inmates not allowed knives out of safety concerns could still meet their daily requirements for nutrition. Not to satisfy their pallets.

Evans, as much as your point is valid, need I remind you that the soldiers in Iraq are in more extreme conditions and eating poorer quality foods than our inmates? Yet they found MRE's "unconstitutional" to serve to inmates!

I would feel sorry for inmate's eating conditions if it wasn't for this.

Why should an inmate eat better food than my husband was served when he was in a combat zone in Kuwait during the Kuwait skurmish?
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6-28-2008 @10:16PM Evans said... I apologize for getting off the food quality subject, but what I should have included in my post,Candi, You are considered innocent until proven guilty, but many innocent people spend time in jail awaiting a trial.

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6-29-2008 @3:50AM Silver_Potato said... Candi as someone who has served this country in uniform, let me tell you that we don't have rights under the US Constitution, we are governed under the articles of the UCMJ.

While your "outrage" about the living conditions of our men and women who serve is right, complaining about prisoners in the US corrections system doesn't amount to jack.

You want to gripe, gripe about the horrible conditions that Vets have to face in the VA system, the lack of funding for our troops in the field, and the horrible decision by this administration to goto war in the first place.

Why don't you ask Bush and his other cronies why they refused back the new G.I. Bill?

The government puts out money for private soldiers or contractors, yet won't support the ones who volunteer.
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6-30-2008 @10:49AM Baron said... @Silver, you need to re-read Candi's post. She wasn't outraged at what the prisoners were being served, she was upset about what those people in the military had to eat. The GI Bill, well, that is another story, many sides to it, but a food blog is hardly the proper place to talk about it.

As for the actual article, this is prison, if you are here, you probably deserve to be here. Yes, I know there are people that are falsely convicted, but even if it is 10% of the prison population, which I highly doubt it is (though, even when you face 12 jurors of your peers, I wouldn't be overly surprised if they weren't the most intelligent group around, so anything is possible). The food shouldn't be tasty, it shouldn't be a place you want to be, you shouldn't get to be comfortable... Prison should be a place that scares you and keeps you from being "bad". The food, well, that is the part that would scare me the worst.
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7-13-2008 @12:37PM Rob said... Bulls***, Prison is where bad people like rapists and murderers go to to pay for what they did, not because it's a hotel or a restaurant! (I thought I was going to point out the army's MREs, but, I'll go ahead.)
The soldiers might as well be eating their own feces and drinking their urine, and they don't whine about it!
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