Short Stuff: Prison Food

But there are more than two million people incarcerated in the United States, and that's a lot of people to feed. Uh, and we're not feeding them very well. And there are groups out there that advocates for prisoners who are on the case and have been for a while trying to get better food to prisoners. Uh. And this woman Loretta Refit, who works for she's a researcher for Prison Voice Washington. Um,

she makes a good point. She's saying, listen, we're not saying prisoners don't want fle mignon, they don't want luxury foods. They just want food that's food, real food, real food, and that also isn't like um, nutritionally deficit or deficient, you know. And let's get something out of the way. If you're like, well, they're prisoners, Who cares if they have tasty food or something like that, or something that's not as high in sodium. Who cares? They're in prison.

They're not supposed to be coddled. Um. There's actually really good answer to that, and that is that if we if we are taking care of prisoners in a certain way in prison, and again there's two million of them in in the United States alone, if they're eating terribly over the course of years, they're also developing the kinds of chronic illnesses that come with eating terribly for years, like UM, heart disease and COPD and just about everything

you can think of diabetes, UM. And then when they get out, they need healthcare or they need healthcare while they're in there too. And so whether they're on government assisted healthcare on the outside or prison healthcare on the inside, you the guy who doesn't care whether they get good food or not on the inside is paying for that. And a really easy way to get around that is for them to just be served nutritious food to begin with.

It's way cheaper than paying for healthcare on the back end. Yeah, there was a study done in two thousand twelve that reported that sevent inmates and state and federal prisons and jails are obese, overweight, obese, or morbidly obese. UM. And I guess it is easy to say, like why give them good food? They are in prison, we should give them gross tasting food. But like you said, it's not. It's one of these things like if you think about the big picture, if one of your arguments is tax dollars,

tax dollars, why am I paying for this? You're gonna be paying for more down the line, So maybe give them some fruits and vegetables every now and then or on a daily basis, even like human beings. And I mean, if you're talking tax dollars and you're paying for their food, Like the amount of money that's spent on prisoners, if you look at it overall for the entire nation, I can't find that data. By the way, there's no there's no data that says this is how much the US

spends on food for prisoners every year. There's nothing like that. It's more by state, even by jurisdiction. But I've seen something between a dollar twenty a day to about three dollars a day per prisoner. The average American eats on about eight dollars and twelve cents a day, So there's a very small amount of money being spent on prisoner food,

which is one problem. But then the second problem that seems to be evolving over the years or has evolved recently, is there used to be prison kitchens, Like the food was prepared there in the prison, and so that meant that the prison could kind of cater more toward inmates, um than they can now where the food preparation is almost exclusively outsourced to companies like Era Mark or in Washington, there's one called UMU Corrections Institutions Food uh, and that's

just a food service. So it's prepared off site, and it's just gotten really really bad, Like there's no such thing as fresh food anymore. It's all reheated in like a tray basically. All right, well, let's come back in a minute. We'll talk a little bit more about that and some of the other complications of feeding two million incarcerated individuals right after this. Alright, so it is tough to feed that many people and keep expenses in check. I think anyone will admit, you can't just have an

open check book and just a it's been whatever it takes. UM. There are budgets to keep in mind, and it's complicated when you think about UM. And this is something I don't think many people think about, but dietary needs, dietary restrictions UM based on your own body or religious grounds,

whether it's kosher or halal or gluten free. Like I never thought about what if you're gluten or dairy free and you're in prison, you probably just go hungry a lot or live with consistent intestinal distress, which would really suck, you know, like that's that's ah. I saw a quote it's like prisons punishment enough, you know, like this doesn't need to be heaped on top of it, something like

persistent intestinal distress. You know. Yeah, I mean it's you're certainly not making for UM more obedient prisoners if someone is always sick. No, but I did look up. I wondered if there if there was a reason that UM that prisons deprived inmates nutrition going to lead to keep them like docile, or if it has the opposite effect. But apparently one of the big UM, one of the big problems, at least in Washington. But I would suspect.

It's probably nationwide. Is a deficiency of protein. There's just not enough protein and proteins pretty important. It's one of the big ones that you really need. Um. So there's less protein. The protein that is typically served to prisoners is hyper processed. Um. There's no fresh vegetables or anything like that. It's all like pre canned or cooked or frozen or something like that. And it's heavy in salt and sometimes sugar too. Just basically the worst food you

could possibly eat, like like junk food made from filler. Yeah. And if you are if you do have dietary restrictions and that have health implications, like let's say you are gluten free or have celiac, um, it will just take whatever has gluten off of your trade. They don't say like, well, how would you like this instead, and you just get

less food. Um. That sucks, man, Yeah, it does. There was And you talked about how much they're spending Amrrico, Pa County, Arizona is very famous for Sheriff Joe and all the news he makes. UM and apparently their Thanksgiving meal. Um. There's a nonprofit journalism group called the Marshall Project that works on criminal justice issues. They did some investigating and found that the Thanksgiving meal in Merrico, PA County cost

fifty six cents per person. It was a cup of carrots, a cup of mashed potatoes, and then five ounces of turkey soil, sorry, turkey soy casserole. Turkey soil. Probably not too far off, I agree. One of the people who are with one of the prison projects said, if you look at a can of organic cat food and the label of the ingredients, and you compare it to a lot of the food that served in prisons, the organic cat food is preferable to the prison food, which is

fairly shameful. But what about the honey buns. There's the honey buns. I also saw a recent one about a type of potato chip that is, um apparently so good that prisoners go crazy after they get out of prison because you can't find it outside of prison. It's made specifically for prisons. It's called the Whole Shebangs and um. This company has caught on recently that people really want this outside of prison, so now they sell it on

their website as well. But it's really expensive on their website. Um, but it's just supposedly the greatest potato chips you can you can never have. It's a combination of salt and vinegar and barbecue flavor. Well, but again, I mean I made the if you haven't heard Our Prisons episode, that's the reference to honey buns. Apparently that's a big that have a lot of trade value. But um, jokes aside, any buns and even the greatest potato chips ever still

junk food. You know, Yeah, yeah, honey buns and greatest potato chips ever definitely still do qualify as junk food. Agreed. Uh, And again you know it's uh. And I know this is a divisive topic about how people treat prisoners. There are a lot of people think that they are pampered and aren't you know they should all be in hard

labor camps eating junk food. But again, if you really look at the big picture, and if you're worried about your tax dollars and where they're going, Um, you're spending a lot more on healthcare by feeding them bad food than just giving them some. And again, they're not asking for filet mignon, but fruits and vegetables, real proteins that isn't just like a heaping of beans. Yeah, just to

put in real numbers. The Prison Policy Initiative, which is a watchdog group, they did a study and they found that correctional facilities spend about six times more on healthcare than they do on food. And again, if you just raise is the quality of food up, it would definitely not be six times more, you know, I do know. Yeah, you got anything else for this episode of short stuff, Chuck, I got nothing else. I'm just gonna go sit down and have some turkey ends and soil, turkey soil protein. Yeah.

Turkey ends was one of the ingredients in Turkey Alla King, which I tried to look up what that was, and the only thing I could find that wasn't you know the country of turkey ends, blank um, was that it's the ends of a turkey roll, which in and of itself doesn't sound like much of a turkey anyway. Although I can't tell you a turkey roll is really good,

is it? Oh? Yeah? The one they come they're super frozen, solid as a brick in a foil pan, and you put the whole thing in the oven for like three hours. But when it comes out, buddy, salty, I bet it's it's tasty, though you shouldn't need them very often. As a matter of fact that I should probably not endorse it at all. Well, at any rate. That's the end of this short stuff. Hope it changed your mind about

things until next time. Short Stuff out. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.