"prison food" news and stories

Strip searches, lockdowns and the ever-present threat of gang violence -- life in prison isn't exactly la dolce vita. But it turns out that being behind bars is sweeter than most of us ever imagined, at least in one respect: honey buns.

As Drew Harwell, staff writer for the St. Petersburg Times, reports, honey buns have taken the nation's penal system by storm. Yes, it seems hardened criminals across the country are eagerly lining up for these cellophane-wrapped sugar-and-fat bombs (the same sort that you find in all manner of vending machines) like kids making a beeline for the ice cream truck in July. (Though most third-graders aren't armed with homemade shivs.)

In Florida alone, inmates buy 270,000 honey buns a month, outselling all types of tobacco and cans of Coke. Their favorite honey bun of all: Mrs. Freshley's Grand Honey Bun, which, with its hardened crust of bleach white frosting looks more like a plastic parody of baked goods than an actual baked good.

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.

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!

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