"PrisonFood" news and stories

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."

Cotton in the Mississippi Delta. Photo: Natalie Maynor, Flickr

A national organization devoted to combating hunger has found a way to wring good works from the South's most notorious prison farms.

The Mississippi office of the Society of St. Andrew, which identifies itself as "America's premier food salvage ministry," last month joined with the Mississippi Food Network to start collecting surplus produce from the Mississippi State Penitentiary -- commonly known as Parchman Farm -- and distributing it to 350 food pantries across the state.

"It's a win-win situation," program coordinator Jackie Usey reports. The program has already collected 40,000 pounds of squash from Parchman's fields.