June 26, 2019 • 11 mins
Prison food is kind of a joke, like airplane food. But there are real consequences involved. Let's get into it in today's short stuff.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to short stuff, the shortest stuff around.
I'm Josh, there's Chuck, there's Jerry over there, and uh,
this is short stuff in case you didn't catch it
the first time around. Right, let's talk about prison food. Yeah,
let's so prison food. Saying prison food is sort of
like a joke, like an airplane meal that someone might
(00:25):
use casually is to represent really bad food. I think
prisoners would literally kill for an airplane food a while.
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
(00:48):
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,
(01:10):
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
(01:32):
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
(01:55):
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.
(02:18):
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
(02:40):
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,
(03:00):
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
(03:21):
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,
(03:45):
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,
(04:05):
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
(04:26):
and some of the other complications of feeding two million
incarcerated individuals right after this. Alright, so it is tough
(04:50):
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
(05:11):
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,
(05:31):
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
(05:52):
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
(06:16):
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
(06:36):
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
(07:00):
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.
(07:23):
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
(07:47):
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
(08:09):
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.
(08:31):
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
(08:53):
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
(09:14):
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
(09:34):
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
(09:57):
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.
(10:17):
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
(10:38):
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
(10:58):
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.
(11:19):
For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hello, and welcome to short stuff, the shortest stuff around.
I'm Josh, there's Chuck, there's Jerry over there, and uh,
this is short stuff in case you didn't catch it
the first time around. Right, let's talk about prison food. Yeah,
let's so prison food. Saying prison food is sort of
like a joke, like an airplane meal that someone might
(00:25):
use casually is to represent really bad food. I think
prisoners would literally kill for an airplane food a while.
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
(00:48):
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,
(01:10):
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
(01:32):
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
(01:55):
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.
(02:18):
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
(02:40):
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,
(03:00):
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
(03:21):
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,
(03:45):
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,
(04:05):
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
(04:26):
and some of the other complications of feeding two million
incarcerated individuals right after this. Alright, so it is tough
(04:50):
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
(05:11):
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,
(05:31):
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
(05:52):
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
(06:16):
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
(06:36):
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
(07:00):
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.
(07:23):
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
(07:47):
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
(08:09):
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.
(08:31):
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
(08:53):
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
(09:14):
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
(09:34):
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
(09:57):
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.
(10:17):
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
(10:38):
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
(10:58):
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.
(11:19):
For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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