Food Fights: The Biggest Culinary Scandals Of 2011
Famous Death Row Last Meals
Photo: Alamy
Processed chicken nuggets, syrupy chocolate milk, heaps of salty French fries: It's no real secret that the state of American public school lunches is a mess. But things are even more depressing than you thought: Inmates – yes, actual criminals behind bars – are probably eating better than our kids.
In a recent article for the Tennessee's Herald-Tribune, reporter Tracey Hackett investigated what comes out of the kitchen at the state's Putnam County Justice Center. She found that each inmate gets two meals a day, breakfast and dinner. (Inmates can buy lunchtime snacks if they have an account, as many do). Hackett found that inmates were typically eating from-scratch, balanced meals -- a far cry from the frozen, chemical-laden processed food our kids are getting.
Sarah Parsons at Sustainable Food, a division of Change.org, makes no bones about it, writing that "When you take a look at the school lunches kids receive in America's cafeterias, jail food looks like a meal at a five-star restaurant."
What's on the menu in prison? One Putnam County Justice Center breakfast consisted of gravy, a biscuit, scrambled eggs, a hash brown patty, pineapple slices, an eight-ounce glass of milk, and some jelly. Dinners are also pretty healthy, typically a sandwich or casserole, two or three servings of vegetables like mashed potatoes, corn and green beans, and sides like cornbread and sweet tea. The inmates even get dessert, like a piece of cake, fruit or a cookie.
And somehow, the prison kitchen managers are doing it for about $1.83 per meal. Schools receive $2.68 for each meal, yet struggle to provide kids with the necessary servings of fruits and veggies. (Congress is currently debating the Improving Nutrition for America's Children Act, an $8 billion initiative to improve the nation's school lunches.)
"I find it hard to believe that a prison could find a way to feed its inmates dairy and five servings of fruits and veggies a day, and the best school cafeterias can do is dish out processed chicken patties and rubbery hot dogs," Parsons writes.
"Most of our inmates probably eat more nutritiously while they're in jail than they do when they're not," said Robert Maynard, kitchen manager at the Justice Center. Maynard his staff have an eight-week menu rotation to ensure meal variety, and a random 14-day sample is submitted to a registered dietitian, who can approve the meals or make suggestions to improve their nutritional value.
The point is not that inmates don't deserve nutritious meals -- it's that our kids do, too.
Want to send your kids to school with better lunch options? Check out our back-to-school ideas on KitchenDaily.
Jennifer Aniston's Effortlessly Sexy Style
Whitney Houston Dead: Singer Dies at 48, Body Found in Beverly Hilton Hotel
PHOTOS: Best And Worst Of Grammy Dresses
Whitney Houston Dead: Stars React to Legend's Sudden Death
Whitney Houston, Bobbi Kristina: Late Singer's Daughter Hospitalized
Sheryl Crow Loves To Flaunt Toned Physique
Whitney Houston Autopsy: Cause of Death Determined?
Grammy Red Carpet 2012 (PHOTOS)
QUIZ: How Much Do You Know About Marriage In The U.S.?
Tips for flying cheaper in 2012
There's only one thing to do when the Nürburgring is covered in snow...
Comforter Soaked In Blood Found In Josh Powell's Storage Unit
Tax Reform in This Election Year: It's Not Likely
Whitney Houston, Bobby Brown: Ex-Husband Honors Singer Onstage
PHOTOS: Remembering Whitney Houston's Glittering Style
Best Things to Buy in February
14 Years Of Christina Ricci's Beauty Looks
LINSANITY CONTINUES
15 Obnoxious Notes From Roommates
Ice Ice Baby: Amsterdam Canals Freeze Solid (PICTURES, VIDEO)
Nicolas Ghesquiere's 1960s Style Muse
Nic Cage Addresses Vampire Rumors On 'Late Show'
Beyonce & Jay-Z Aim To Trademark Blue Ivy Carter
TV's Best Music Moments
The Happiest People In The World...
Chloë Moretz Is All Grown Up
White House Bending On Birth Control Rule
PHOTOS: Who WIll Be This Year's Cover Girl?
PHOTOS: Gisele Hits The Runway For Alexander Wang
PHOTOS: Makeup Malfunction!
TV Shows That Last Too Long
7-28-2010 @3:44PM Karen said... But don't prisons have a near-endless source of cheap labor -- aka, the prisoners? I bet school lunches would be better if there were plenty of cooks and we didn't have to pay them.
If that's not the case, what accounts for the difference? Do prisons have access to resources that are somehow denied to schools? Are folks who run prison cafeterias smarted than folks who run school cafeterias? Doubtful.
Reply
7-29-2010 @3:14PM Paul said... The reason is simple. This country cares very little for its children and their welfare. Prisoners have more rights in jail than most people think. Notice that when we need to cut things in a budget, what is hit FIRST? Education. Children's lunches have been cut during both economic hard times as well as during good times. Prisoner's rights are rarely ever cut, because then the prisoners sue the state. We should care less about prison overcrowding than we do about school class overcrowding.
7-29-2010 @3:33PM Simzee said... I see the county jail food is better than a state or federal prison. Perhaps the writer should go there.
7-30-2010 @11:00AM Lois Dowell said... Guess you have never seen the crap they serve at FCI Englewood in Colorado. It is discusting. No salty fries there. Just lots of rice, beans, and spinage. You really should check your facts. Sone institutions have decent for but Englewood is not one of them.
7-29-2010 @6:46PM laurie said... I was released on July 1st after spending 26 months in a county jail & another 2 months in a state prison & I can tell you for sure that there is NO WAY that inmates are eating better than school kids. The portions wouldnt fill a toddler & the food is way below par & we were only given no more than 10 minutes to scarf down our food. If you really want to know, go get arrested & you will see for yourself.
7-29-2010 @6:01PM Susan said... School lunchrooms are run like institutions. Most school systems went to a district wide preparation center, and the cooked meals are sent and reheated at each school. All this done under the guise of saving money. Sure, they probably cut their labor dollars, but....YUK! They should return to the days when the food was prepared on site, from scratch using recipes, instead of dumping frozen food in an oven or in a fryer. My elementary school had a manager that used her own italian recipes, and everyone's mom and dad ate lunch with them! I do not eat the food at my son's school (neither does he!), I pack a lunch from home.
7-29-2010 @7:15PM hmmm.. said... If inmates are a source of free labor, and all the school meals are prepared at a central facility, maybe the inmates could also prepare the school kids meals???? Let the inmates earn their keep, learn a skill and feed our kids better!
7-29-2010 @8:26PM darrell said... some of the smartest people you will ever meet are in jail.Just because they got caught doesn't make them stupid. As for the food, the menu sounds great but just like all mass produced food it's bad.
7-29-2010 @9:32PM Chuck said... simzee,
You are not quite right. You obviously haven't heard of Sheriff Joe of the Maricopa County jail in Arizona.
7-29-2010 @10:15PM Adam said... Did this reporter bother to inspect the grade or quality of the ingredients in prison? You can slap a fancy name on anything to make it sound appetizing. Why is it that when inmates are released it is a commonly known fact that they get diarreha from "real" food. Add to that, try eating the same stuff day after day after day, year after year. Did the writer also discover that prison food service managers get a bonus the lower they can keep their budget? The national average for a prison meal is under a dollar. $1.97? Really?
7-30-2010 @12:27AM Floyd said... You are no doubt, correct. The labor in prison kitchens runs about $0.29 an hour, as opposed to $9 in most public schools. Take into consideration the retirement pans, medical plans, paid sick days and holiday pay.... The rub in the labor, for sure.
Additionally, many of the supplies and even the foodstuffs used in prisons are produced or manufactured by the prisoners themselves. many states have prison farms that pour cheap, nutritious food directly into the system, again produced for a fraction of the labor cost normally associated with such efforts.
My suggestion would be to take the money saved by cheap production prices in prisons, pour them onto the schools, and give the cons the rubber chicken nuggets.
7-29-2010 @7:18AM Carol Leonard said... Sorry, I dont buy this for one red hot minute....this story is utterly NOT true. For those of us with first hand knowledge of the system and how prisons feed their population- this is a total farce. Perfect example, Joe Arapio from Arizona feeds his prisoners green bologna ( if thats what you want to call it). There are standards and guidelines for school cafeterias as there are for state prisons...they must be followed. I can say there needs to be more homework completed on this topic. Of course the public would LOVE to hear how we feed prisoners better than children....media lies!!
Reply
7-29-2010 @2:40PM Pat said... I agree with you Carol. This jail must be about the only one that feeds it's prisoners better than school kids. From what I've heard, the food is terrible.
7-29-2010 @3:44PM Joseph Roberts said... If inmates ate what kids get at school, I guarantee serious rioting.
7-29-2010 @4:45PM leonard said... this story is not a farce,I worked in a county jail for 3 years and this menu is far less then what they served at the jail i worked, breakfast : eggs,bacon,or sausage,some times creamed beef on toast, toast, coffee. Lunch hamburger,or hot dog,fries,juice, Dinner chicken,roast beef,or pork,sometimes ribs,potatoes veggies,milk. holiday meals were turkey&gravy+ham+beef,sweet potatoes veggies,mixed nuts,candy,coffee and a juice. guards were fed before inmates,and i ate better at work then home!!
7-29-2010 @5:44PM Craig said...
Good for Joe, go AZ. Once a person has decided to become a criminal their rights should be zero, but we have such an affinity to thinking we can cure their stinking thinking we put criminals first over our kids. Sheriff Joe has low recidivism, 1/2 less than San Quentin. Should tell you something. Make so bad that the criminals decide to get straight and live right. Prison should be more like a place of punishment rather being catered to such as they are.
7-30-2010 @1:25PM Rich Stockton said... I can tell you first-hand that prisoners in Arizona do not eat better than school children. Unfortunately our son was caught up in the Oxy-Contin mess that is almost of epidemic proportion in this country. We visited him at the "famed" Joe Arropo" prison and were absolutley disgusted. The prisoners are fed rotten food that is obviously obtained at no or very little cost to the prison. If prisoners do not have "money on their books" normally provided by relatives, they are forced to exist on rotten food that is guaranteed to make you sick if you eat it. Food poisoning is very common-- but what the heck, they are prisoners......right? Unfortunately, it is no better at the state run prisons. This is media hype, which brings back memories to a Viet Nam vet, none of which make me warm and fuzzy.....just wondering how such a great country can continue to decline so rapidly.
7-29-2010 @6:54PM Jade Falzon said... Oh those poor criminals! You're a taxpayer are you? I don't want my hard-earned money going to prisoners - kids are a helluva lot more important than crooks, rapists and murderers! Where are your morals? You don't sound like you have any and your priorities are pretty screwed up!
7-29-2010 @7:21PM Debbie Kerchee said... Thank you Carol L., for speaking the truth. Unless Jane and John Doe know what's behind the razor wire, they need not speak. Prison food is not nutritious at all, it is high in saturated fat, salt, and sugar. Besides all that, it is utterly tasteless. If you want to know what goes on in our prison system, where we have slave labor, abuse, and innocent men and women behind bars, serving time for crimes they did not commit, then know someone behind the dungeon walls.
7-29-2010 @7:57PM P said... I agree with you Carol because I work in schools and I know that I have huge overhead charges that account for more of the budget than the food. I also make everything from scratch, some managers just don't know how to cook from scratch and they don't take the time to teach their staff how to cook from scratch. I also keep all my waste from the veggies and have a compost area that I started with the school. I hate hate hate when these articles come out and make blanket statements that ALL food is this way or that way based on little research.