I've always sort of thought when giving my dog "dog food" (presumably a mix of all the nutrition a dog would need since it's all I had to feed him), what about "human food"? Googling will quickly show you that others had the question and the answer seems that zoos do have something similar called primate chow. It would seem that Soylent was the Silicon Valley answer to the question as well, but liquid nutrition products for medical needs long predate it. I suppose I'll add Nutraloaf to my mental inventory.
> Nutraloaf contains everything from carrots and cabbage to kidney beans and potatoes, plus shadowy ingredients such as “dairy blend” and “mechanically separated poultry.” You purée everything into a paste, shape it into a loaf, and bake it for 50 to 70 minutes at 375 degrees.
I once made the mistake of trying BOL power shake [0]. I imagine the thing described above tastes about the same as that. I couldn't have more than a few sips, it was absolutely disgusting.
Imagine being the product designer for this stuff: "Customer's requirement is for the food to be as cruel as possible, without technically meeting the legal definition of cruelty." The article didn't say anything about the cost, but something tells me it's slightly more expensive than normal prison food. I could totally see the justice system paying more for the ability to treat prisoners worse.
I've heard that prisons design meals that use lots or soy in theory to lower agression in inmates which can cause poor health outcomes. Although I've never seen any evidence that men shouldn't eat soy based diets, considering half the world's population uses it as a main source of protein this is probably bullcrap.
People also get yoked in prison so there must be enough calories and protein available in the meals to allow for that sort of muscle building and maintenance.
Probably more nutritious than the food most people in poverty are eating.
I love cooking and love eating new things but I absolutely hate having to figure out what to eat everyday without just resorting to crappy and expensive take out or fast food. Sometimes I just want to eat something without having to think about it and without eating something that will make me feel bad. I'd love to have a human equivalent of dog food to eat when I'm feeling lazy. A nutraloaf with a bit of salt and seasonings probably wouldn't be too bad. It's not a ribeye, loaded baked potato, and Caesar salad but it has all of your nutrients and about as close to whole food as you can get without actually being whole food. It could be sold frozen or in retort pouches (cooked in the pouch) or you could just make your own and freeze it.
> Imagine being the product designer for this stuff:
Somewhat related, but the two architects I personally met, both were the unhappy kind: one was designing casinos, and the other prisons. It's like a real life Far Side cartoon of some sort, both doing exactly the opposite of all the things they learned in school.
Same for the chefs here I guess "Ok, remember what you learned in culinary school? Do exactly the opposite and you'll be just fine".
Imagine being the designer of handcuffs: "Customer requirement is to for prevent effective use of a detainee's hands, without technically violating their rights."
Imagine being the designer of AA missiles: "Customer requirement is to destroy an aircraft containing human being, with maximum effectiveness and minimum cost."
Imagine doing any hurtful thing whatsoever, without the context of why it's being done.
The Nutraloaf is what they give to prisoners after pretty much every other punitive measure is attempted to correct their behavior. If there were a more humane measure, they'd have tried that already.
Edit: Imagine being the writer of a Hacker News comment: "Customer requirement is to bring the maximum amount of sense to a discussion, without violating any of the community's sacred cows."
I have children, and it’s always more work for me to give them consequences for bad behavior than to let it slide. The examples given in the article for why prisoners are put on the nutraloaf program seem pretty reasonable, especially if it’s effective at curbing recidivism.
I see prisoners as people who haven’t yet learned how to act appropriately in the world, what ways are ok to treat others versus what isn’t ok. That’s the similarity I was trying to draw with children.
“You can’t hit people even if you’re frustrated” is a lesson in common, for example.
> Or just get yourself tossed into Cook County Jail, where an inmate who causes serious food-related problems buys himself a one-way ticket to Nutraloafopolis. Get caught making homemade hooch in your cell toilet? You get Nutraloaf. Hurl food at a guard or stab someone with a spork? Nutraloaf.
The article calls out that people who are fed Nutraloaf in prison have committed additional offenses. Are you advocating that it’s ok to stab a prison guard if you feel that your incarceration was unfair?
> Are you advocating that it’s ok to stab a prison guard if you feel that your incarceration was unfair?
There are many different levels of feeling that something is “unfair,” but in the limit of being incarcerated with no crime, it’s indistinguishable by the incarcerated individual from kidnapping by a large, organized gang. Are you advocating that self defense against kidnappers is inappropriate?
while I don't really agree with op, you're stretching things here quite a bit.
a) it's a county jail, not state or federal prison. the people there wouldn't be hardened criminals there for extended stays. they'd mostly be, afaik, petty criminals and people waiting for trial dates. I suspect the spork stabbings aren't attempts at murder, particularly against prison guards (esp. considering the article says "stab someone" vs "hurl food at a prison guard").
b) the article, the part you quoted in fact, specifically calls out food-related problems, not "additional offenses". making prison wine and throwing food could probably be laboured into offenses if someone with power was vindictive enough, but those are really basic administrative issues and this nutraloaf is an administrative response.
Yes, they are. That what is appropriate is not the same as what is fair and just is not relevant to the question of whether prisoners are people who have not learned to behave appropriately.
> especially if it’s effective at curbing recidivism.
There's nothing in the article examining its effect on recidivism. It's probably no more effective at that than jail in general, which is to say, there are much more effective interventions.
That’s not recidivism, which is the return to committing crimes after release. This is a punishment for bad behavior while inside the jail. It’s a method of behavioral control in real time. I doubt that anyone who gets out of jail is using the argument of, “maybe I’ll have to eat Nutraloaf if I go back to jail” as a factor in choosing to commit or not commit further crimes.
it's a small point and maybe a different word would have been more clear (because I agree, recidivism commonly refers to committing crimes again after being released from jail), but none of the definitions I found for recidivism were specific to release from jail - the definition seems to be committing offenses again after some type of intervention. in the case of the nutraloaf, you're already in jail and you commit some additional offense (say, starting a food fight). the article seemed to indicate that in most cases, the offender avoided doing the sorts of things that could get them back on nutraloaf - in my opinion, that meets the definition of recidivism.
>That’s not recidivism, which is the return to committing crimes after release.
you raise an interesting point, and I did a bit of a dive into various dictionaries, new and old: chances of re-incarceration after release is an important aspect of criminology and public policy, but it's not built into the word recidivism.
recidivism is "backsliding", so it's more a case of "draw a line or a gradient, then measure recidivism across that line or gradient"
in the context of prisoners, it's probably a good idea to be clear about the sense of the definition chosen.
And by sticking them into a prison-industrial complex, they will continue causing harm, it's been pretty conclusively shown. But profits and electoral clout are difficult to ignore...
Only when you apply an abstraction to simplify a complicated world so that it’s easier for you to digest.
In reality it does not hold true that all persons in jails/prisons deserve the punishment.
In fact, this injustice is often perpetrated by the same people who are overwhelmed by a complicated world and vote for “tough on crime” politicians who will perpetrate the injustice to help calm their voters’ meek anxieties.
Except treating them like shit means they are wrecked when they get out.
Norway’s cushy prisons have a 20% recidivism rate to America’s 70%. A punitive criminal justice system tends to lead to more victimization (and costs!), not less.
I think if we adopted the Norwegian system, we would still have huge amounts of recidivism, which could only be solved by wholesale reorganization of our society.
When we do cruel things, whatever the reason, we degrade ourselves and that is something we can judge them on. Judge people by how they treat those they have power or privilege over
Keep your revenge fantasies to yourself. I hope you can see that you're being a hypocrite, wanting to counter alleged cruelty by treating people cruelly, which would make you no different from them.
I don’t read it as a revenge fantasy so much as indifference and an unwillingness to work for them to improve their conditions. I get that it would be better for society if we all worked harder to treat criminals better to lower the recidivism rate to protect ourselves from subsequent crime, but it’s also a hard sell to ask people to give up their limited time with family, friends, hobbies and interests, and go do that actual work. Is it those people’s fault if someone they dont know commits a crime? What society has ever existed without deviant behavior?
I think the proof of that unwillingness to dedicate time is in the pudding. Do you work to make inmates better food, or make their kitchen more inviting? Does anyone responding indignantly to OP? This food critic wrote this thinkpiece based on their little adventure, then they’re going to go back to their enlightened culinary experiences at Naha et al. So what have they really accomplished?
It almost reads as condescending towards inmates: a bunch of high society types gawking and pontificating from afar about how positively terrible their living conditions are. Oh and also, did you hear about Crowdstrike and Harris and the new way to build a UI with Javascript? It’s like overhearing conversation taking place between a couple of people from Google on a team building field trip to the zoo.
I’d love to be wrong and come back here and read a piece about how some rich tech bros decided to revolutionize a correctional facility’s food system. But until I see that I see no reason to change my opinion on the behavior I’m seeing right now.
I don't volunteer at jails or prisons but I volunteer at a food pantry serving the poor, and on the topic of criminal justice I've given a fair amount of money to the innocence project. Don't assume that these are empty words from me.
> it’s also a hard sell to ask people to give up their limited time with family, friends, hobbies and interests, and go do that actual work
I have also given money to criminal advocacy groups. I’ll take back my harshest accusations of empty words against you in light of your claims.
But let’s not lose perspective here. Murder, rape, embezzlement… these are despicably selfish acts, among others.
I have a family to care for, I do the best I can to provide food, shelter, medical care, and proper development so I don’t raise a child that becomes a criminal. And yes, sometimes that involves actually having fun. Just because I don’t feel I should sacrifice everything to live an ascetic lifestyle serving criminals, does not make me absolutely selfish. There’s much more nuance than that.
Sorry (heh). I think I'm out of the loop here... that article is paywalled, and I'm honestly not sure what it's referring to. Is there some broader anti-apology movement these days I'm just not aware of?
I'm sure I haven't paid for The Globe and Mail, so I'm a little puzzled.
It's been observed that demanding an apology for everything is a weasel-y, performative, and Millennial thing, and the author is actually pushing back against that.
Might be regional, or maybe you have an account? Not sure. (I'm in Oregon, but doubt they'd separately region-lock the Bay Area vs here...) Anyway, thanks for the summary. Archive.ph ended up fetching it successfully: https://archive.ph/wqLN8
I see what the author is saying now. I don't think I'd go to either extreme, either always apologizing or never. Explanations are always nice when they're not hollow excuses, but IMO apologies are better when they're reserved for the times you sincerely fuck up and feel bad.
I'm an early Millennial, though, so maybe just less civilized than my younger brethren, lol.
I don't necessarily agree with your original comment, but I don't think you have anything to apologize for either. You just stated an opinion and spurred a discussion.
Our criminal justice system is usually just completely ignored by people. Having any awareness and discussion of it at all is an improvement, IMO.
Not all law breaking is created equal. It's a sad state of affairs when people can't distinguish gradations and treat everyone as the worst case they can imagine.
If you don't stimulate the identity politics bug, for some reason, the idea that the victim is a real person with real rights that were permanently stolen vanishes into the wind, like passed gas that we all politely pretend never happened.
> these are people who for the most part caused great harm to others so I have no problem with this.
There are many forms of crimes, dar say majority, that don't cause great harm to others (eg theft, drug possession). For those, and the > 0% falsely/wrongfully incarcerated, you should have empathy in general for prisoners and expect humane conditions.
That’s a matter of opinion. 2/3s of America cannot afford a $400 emergency expense. If you steal and crash someone’s car, and that causes the individual to lose their job while the insurance is being figured out, their kids could spend the next few months in serious suffering.
What about smaller crimes, like shoplifting? 44% of our economy is small businesses; steal from them when they are already at the edge of a knife, treat it like it’s nothing, and you’ll break real families.
You have no conception of how much a “small” theft can injure most people.
As for drug possession; that imprisonment is quite possibly the best thing you can do for them compared to them overdosing on a street corner. Any mother would have their child eat Nutraloaf for 5 years straight than overdose on a public road.
Except that in America, most prisoners are worse criminals when they come out then when they went in. The system stupidly creates a self-perpetuating problem. Mostly because of our f*ked up puritanical morals.
mock executions are banned under most human rights conventions, and nutriloaf as described is simulated poison. given the intent is stated explicitly as removing the sense of having eaten from food, there's no consistent system of ethics where this is not torture. it makes the inmate feel like they are starving even though they aren't.
I look forward to seeing a case against the manufacturer in the supreme court.
> I look forward to seeing a case against the manufacturer in the supreme court.
Unless a certain 6 of the current 9 justices miraculously find their way off the court in the next couple months, you’ll be looking forward to this practice continuing either way.
Cut the hyperbole. From the description in the OP it just flavorless with bad texture. It's not great but nowhere close to "simulated poison" or "mock execution".
>it makes the inmate feel like they are starving even though they aren't.
Where is this from? The OP specifically mentions that he "felt so full and lethargic that I skipped dinner and the following breakfast".
> so intrinsically disagreeable that my throat nearly closed up reflexively.
and then:
> That night, my stomach’s rebellion against the loaf was anything but neutral. I felt so full and lethargic that I skipped dinner and the following breakfast.
...followed by a euphemism for serious diarrhea.
I'd encourage you to call poison control with those symptoms. Then consider what you would do if you had a kid or loved one with those symptoms and they ate "something" they didn't know what it was. Regarding starving, they feel like they have not eaten, but rather have been poisoned and can no longer eat more. That's not eating.
I did. You cherrypicked one part, which is seemingly contradicted by other parts of the paragraph:
"The mushy, disturbingly uniform innards recalled the thick, pulpy aftermath of something you dissected in biology class: so intrinsically disagreeable that my throat nearly closed up reflexively. But the funny thing about Nutraloaf is the taste. It’s not awful, nor is it especially good. I kept trying to detect any individual element—carrot? egg?—and failing. Nutraloaf tastes blank, as though someone physically removed all hints of flavor."
The author admits that taste isn't even bad, so presumably his body is disagreeing with the texture. Maybe I care about texture less than the average person, or the scientists at Aramark managed to make something so textually bad that it transcends normal foods, but I can't imagine something so textually bad that it tastes anywhere close to literal poison. Underneath the writer's flourish, I don't see anything to suggest it's not anything worse than my previous assessment of "just flavorless with bad texture".
>...followed by a euphemism for serious diarrhea.
Besides the problem reading way too much in between the lines, I can't think of any plausible reason how the food can cause diarrhea. After all, the blandless/bad texture can plausibly describe meal replacements like soylent or meal squares, and those seem to sell well enough to suggest they don't give people gastric distress.
>I'd encourage you to call poison control with those symptoms. Then consider what you would do if you had a kid or loved one with those symptoms and they ate "something" they didn't know what it was. Regarding starving, they feel like they have not eaten, but rather have been poisoned and can no longer eat more. That's not eating.
I know you're trying really hard to push to "this is poison" angle, but this is just silly. The only reason why you'd call poison control in that case is that there's a plausible chance that household chemicals were consumed. I seriously doubt you're going to call poison control that absent that possibility (eg. your kid coming home from school with upset stomach). Nutriloaf, as bad as it is texture wise, doesn't contain any toxic chemicals. It just tastes bland and has bad texture.
I do not doubt that Nutriloaf would give some people diarrhea, but that doesn't mean that it's poison. Nutriloaf is drastically different than normal/usual food which is enough to cause problems. It probably has a lot more fiber if they're adding cheap vegetables as filler. It probably has a lot less simple carbs/fat too.
People complain about Taco Bell giving them diarrhea for similar reasons.
It is designed to tell your body you are being force fed something other than food. The author was made sick by it. Litigate this somewhere else.
I said it was described as what was essentially a "simulated poison," because force feeding it to people it is analogous to how a mock execution uses "simulated" click of a trigger- it's not poisoning people and firing blanks isn't killing them- but they are both simulated acts intended to force compliance. This isn't "bland," it's manufacturing shit that doesn't kill you immediately and forcing people to eat it.
I did not say it was poison, but I'd be pretty suspicious of what your interest is on this one. try not to make it sound like you've been torturing people.
>It is designed to tell your body you are being force fed something other than food. The author was made sick by it. Litigate this somewhere else.
It's designed to be bland. Everything else is your conjecture. Moreover, what even is "something other than food"? Like I said in my previous comment, people seem to eat ultraprocessed foods like soylent and mealsquares just fine, and those are probably even further from what "food" actually is. At least with nutriloaf you can make out pieces of the constituent ingredients.
>I said it was described as what was essentially a "simulated poison," because force feeding it to people it is analogous to how a mock execution uses "simulated" click of a trigger
No, simulated poison would be feeding you denatonium or something. Eating nutriloaf might not be the most appetizing, but based on the ingredients it's nowhere close to eating actual poison. I looked at other sources[1] and so far as I can tell, it's just bland. I also found a lawsuit by an inmate that alleges it was making him sick, but aside from him and the dining critic, I can't find any evidence that it's causing sickness on a large scale, which would be expected given how many institution use it. Maybe it really is "simulated poison" to a few % of people, and in those cases I'd agree it would be considered cruel and unusual punishment, but people who get sick from milk or taco bell, that doesn't mean milk or taco bell is "simulated poison".
>I did not say it was poison, but I'd be pretty suspicious of what your interest is on this one. try not to make it sound like you've been torturing people.
If you have to resort to questioning motives and borderline implying that I torture people, it's probably a sign that you don't have actual responses to the object level question and want to derail the discussion into something else.
I wonder if you can make it taste good with some sauces and spices, and maybe air frying it a bit. It doesn't sound all that bad on paper... basically a poor man's casserole?
Heh. I'm not a gym bro, just a fat lazy guy who can't cook, but I eat something similar multiple times a day (Huel, which actually does have great flavor IMO). I'd honestly be kinda excited to try more of these food-like substances.
I think the government should be held to a higher standard when applying the law than a random Joe Citizen. Governments should be more like "don't be evil" than "intentionally find every underspecified law and stretch it to its limits to make people's lives worse".
Alas, people don't want to spend money to make prison better and some particularly want prison to be as bad as legally possible (or worse), under the impression that it will deter criminal behavior.
I thought that prison is there to train them to get better at committing crimes, given that society doesn’t allow them to get a straight job after they are released. Then when they get caught again they can be used for cheap labor.
It's a nice idea, in that the punishment isn't pain, it's the removal of joy. But the whole idea of disciplinary punishment is whack. It's treating the symptom rather than the cause. They're not stabbing people with sporks for no reason. They're having a conflict, and stabbing is the last resort to resolve the conflict. Nobody wants to accept the fact that prisoners are in fact human beings, motivated by the same things every human being is motivated by. If you address those motivations, instead of just waiting for something bad to happen and reacting to it, you'll have less bad things happen. But that'll never change as long as prisons are a profit-making enterprise, and our system of justice and reform is just a punitive treadmill.
(as an aside: bland food won't work well on someone who lost their sense of smell from long covid, and prison populations were heavily affected)
Where I come from, there are detention centers, and rehabilitation centers.
In a detention center, you get a spoon to eat with, rehabilitation, a knife and fork. Other living conditions are inline with that.
You seem to think all humans are the same, well adjusted, able to readily and happily change to live with others, and so on.
The truth is, many people in jail are indeed stabbing others in jail for "no reason", as in "no reason most would consider valid".
There are indeed issues with the US prison system, or so I've read, but I assure you that inmates in prisons are known, world wide, to get stabby without cause. Here's a primary example...You know you can punch someone in the head instead of stabbing, yes?
This continues down to "talking instead of physical violence", but by saying stabbing is the result of poor conditions, you're saying stabbing is the sensible result of any lack of joy.
The word "criminal" has always been an overbroad term that conflates several different levels of harm without nuance, but at this point in history I don't even believe that the majority of people incarcerated are there from doing harm to someone, nor that the people doing the most harm ever see a jail cell
There's a whole body of complicated philosophy about what criminal law should do, whether it's about avenging victims or rehabilitating offenders or deterrance or profit motive, but I don't think we even need to get into that because a fundamental assumption even having that conversation requires is that the things the state locks people up for are legitimate and this is at this point the exception for me rather than the rule
I'm not defending OP or trying to argue, but I do want to add some info here. That number is only for state prisons, it's not the entire prison population.
That's a good contribution to the discussion, thanks. I didn't intend it as a complete statement.
But it should be added that violent offenders are not the only category which harmed someone. Stealing from people harms them. Others might want to carve out shoplifting from this, but not me: for one thing, many stores are owned by identifiable human beings, and stealing from that store is stealing directly from them. For big chains or whatever, diffuse harm is still harm. On a personal level I care less about the latter, but this is not a distinction which should be enshrined into law. Theft is wrong.
By any sane breakdown, the large majority of people imprisoned or jailed are there directly due to harming other people. I lean towards policy which will minimize the amount of offenses which don't directly harm other people, personally. What crimes you feel fall into that category differs from person to person, though.
But the fact remains that pointing guns at people, stabbing them, stealing their car, breaking into their house, raping them: these harm the victims, directly, and those sorts of offenses are, in fact, the majority for which prisoners are imprisoned or jailed.
It doesn't really matter. Whether it's 51% or 99% of people "doing harm", there's still a percentage of people in jail for such things as:
- copyright violation
- jaywalking
- possessing marijuana
- peeing outside within 100 yards of a minor
- a 17 and 18 year old in a committed relationship having consensual sex
- "obscenity"
- [medically necessary] abortion [of a pregnancy due to rape from a family member]
- being gay in the military
Let me remind you (& everyone) that this is not normal outside of our very fucked up country. We lock up so many more people that the next 3 biggest countries combined still don't lock up as much as we do. We have an incarceration problem.
So, ignore those, and focus on the violent crimes again. Why do we have so many more violent criminals than anyone else? Do we still think this is just totally normal, and we can't do anything about it, so fuck it, lock them up and throw away the key? If we were talking about any other metric of a healthy population (child death rate, inability to get food or housing, infectious disease rate, etc) we would be actually working to change these numbers rather than just building more places to stick the people we don't want to think about. Maybe the fact that there are so many violent crimes is a good enough reason for us to start rethinking our policies, what makes our fucked up citizens act this way, and how we can begin to turn the tide.
> (as an aside: bland food won't work well on someone who lost their sense of smell from long covid, and prison populations were heavily affected)
The consistent texture of the Nutraloaf may “help” here. My spouse lost her sense of smell (for other reasons than Covid) years ago and now relies heavily on textures for food enjoyment.
I drunk Soylent (and nothing else) for a month. The taste matches the taste described in the article closely. But it was marketed as food for successful startupers, not as punishment for prisoners. So it's all psychology.
> Of the jail’s 9,000 inmates, 21 have endured the Nutraloaf program since it began in June. One begged—No! Anything but Nutraloaf!—and another went on a hunger strike. Both men, and virtually every other Nutraloafer, straightened up enough to get back to the usual diet of oatmeal and processed bologna.
If it's a punishment specifically targeted at changing behavior, it may be successful by that measure.
I was involved in an organization that helped inmates. It was an eye-opening experience. A lot of the younger blacks are there because they want to be there: it's where all the cool people are. So they deliberately try to get into prison. The current system is working just fine for them. Not for all blacks of course, but that seemed to be the trend. This was a medium-security state prison. The story for whites was almost universally a variant of "I don't care if the law is fair, once I'm out of here I'm going to do everything to stay out of here."
I imagine that has to do with how welcoming the prison gangs are for the respective races. The most common white gang in prison is the aryan brotherhood and I’m guessing they are probably a pain in the ass to everyone not putting a swastika on their hand.
They're not very widespread though. I don't think they had a presence at my prison. I don't think there were any other white gangs there. The mix was about 50% white / 50% black. Didn't see many Hispanics.
135 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 201 ms ] threadThe difference is that that's used in combination with other ingredients which provide flavor, while this is served on its own.
https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/diet-nutrition/news/...
If you're anything like me, you're now asking "no, really, Penn, where is all that weight? what's the joke?" and you'll be disappointed.
Used to be inhumane to give that to prisoners too often, and now it’s delicacy?
https://historyofyesterday.com/lobster-used-to-be-a-poor-man...
I once made the mistake of trying BOL power shake [0]. I imagine the thing described above tastes about the same as that. I couldn't have more than a few sips, it was absolutely disgusting.
[0] https://bolfoods.com/products/salted-caramel?variant=4289476...
I imagine it is lacking a lot of micronutrients and/or doesnt have them in a bioavailable form.
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/us/soy-diet-is-cruel-and-...
I love cooking and love eating new things but I absolutely hate having to figure out what to eat everyday without just resorting to crappy and expensive take out or fast food. Sometimes I just want to eat something without having to think about it and without eating something that will make me feel bad. I'd love to have a human equivalent of dog food to eat when I'm feeling lazy. A nutraloaf with a bit of salt and seasonings probably wouldn't be too bad. It's not a ribeye, loaded baked potato, and Caesar salad but it has all of your nutrients and about as close to whole food as you can get without actually being whole food. It could be sold frozen or in retort pouches (cooked in the pouch) or you could just make your own and freeze it.
Somewhat related, but the two architects I personally met, both were the unhappy kind: one was designing casinos, and the other prisons. It's like a real life Far Side cartoon of some sort, both doing exactly the opposite of all the things they learned in school.
Same for the chefs here I guess "Ok, remember what you learned in culinary school? Do exactly the opposite and you'll be just fine".
Imagine being the designer of AA missiles: "Customer requirement is to destroy an aircraft containing human being, with maximum effectiveness and minimum cost."
Imagine doing any hurtful thing whatsoever, without the context of why it's being done.
The Nutraloaf is what they give to prisoners after pretty much every other punitive measure is attempted to correct their behavior. If there were a more humane measure, they'd have tried that already.
Edit: Imagine being the writer of a Hacker News comment: "Customer requirement is to bring the maximum amount of sense to a discussion, without violating any of the community's sacred cows."
I don’t know if that’s talking about how folks treat their kids vs how they see prisoners.
“You can’t hit people even if you’re frustrated” is a lesson in common, for example.
And:
> prisoners as people who haven’t yet learned how to act appropriately in the world
People selling and using drugs (non violent, for example) are people who haven’t learned how to act appropriately?
People in prison for dodging military service and drafts?
People in prison for having to steal for feeding their family?
These are the vast majority of people in prisons around the world. These first category being the majority of prisoners in America.
> Or just get yourself tossed into Cook County Jail, where an inmate who causes serious food-related problems buys himself a one-way ticket to Nutraloafopolis. Get caught making homemade hooch in your cell toilet? You get Nutraloaf. Hurl food at a guard or stab someone with a spork? Nutraloaf.
The article calls out that people who are fed Nutraloaf in prison have committed additional offenses. Are you advocating that it’s ok to stab a prison guard if you feel that your incarceration was unfair?
There are many different levels of feeling that something is “unfair,” but in the limit of being incarcerated with no crime, it’s indistinguishable by the incarcerated individual from kidnapping by a large, organized gang. Are you advocating that self defense against kidnappers is inappropriate?
a) it's a county jail, not state or federal prison. the people there wouldn't be hardened criminals there for extended stays. they'd mostly be, afaik, petty criminals and people waiting for trial dates. I suspect the spork stabbings aren't attempts at murder, particularly against prison guards (esp. considering the article says "stab someone" vs "hurl food at a prison guard").
b) the article, the part you quoted in fact, specifically calls out food-related problems, not "additional offenses". making prison wine and throwing food could probably be laboured into offenses if someone with power was vindictive enough, but those are really basic administrative issues and this nutraloaf is an administrative response.
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/pie2023_drugs.html
There's nothing in the article examining its effect on recidivism. It's probably no more effective at that than jail in general, which is to say, there are much more effective interventions.
you raise an interesting point, and I did a bit of a dive into various dictionaries, new and old: chances of re-incarceration after release is an important aspect of criminology and public policy, but it's not built into the word recidivism.
recidivism is "backsliding", so it's more a case of "draw a line or a gradient, then measure recidivism across that line or gradient"
in the context of prisoners, it's probably a good idea to be clear about the sense of the definition chosen.
In reality it does not hold true that all persons in jails/prisons deserve the punishment.
In fact, this injustice is often perpetrated by the same people who are overwhelmed by a complicated world and vote for “tough on crime” politicians who will perpetrate the injustice to help calm their voters’ meek anxieties.
Norway’s cushy prisons have a 20% recidivism rate to America’s 70%. A punitive criminal justice system tends to lead to more victimization (and costs!), not less.
I think the proof of that unwillingness to dedicate time is in the pudding. Do you work to make inmates better food, or make their kitchen more inviting? Does anyone responding indignantly to OP? This food critic wrote this thinkpiece based on their little adventure, then they’re going to go back to their enlightened culinary experiences at Naha et al. So what have they really accomplished?
It almost reads as condescending towards inmates: a bunch of high society types gawking and pontificating from afar about how positively terrible their living conditions are. Oh and also, did you hear about Crowdstrike and Harris and the new way to build a UI with Javascript? It’s like overhearing conversation taking place between a couple of people from Google on a team building field trip to the zoo.
I’d love to be wrong and come back here and read a piece about how some rich tech bros decided to revolutionize a correctional facility’s food system. But until I see that I see no reason to change my opinion on the behavior I’m seeing right now.
> it’s also a hard sell to ask people to give up their limited time with family, friends, hobbies and interests, and go do that actual work
This just shows your own selfishness.
But let’s not lose perspective here. Murder, rape, embezzlement… these are despicably selfish acts, among others.
I have a family to care for, I do the best I can to provide food, shelter, medical care, and proper development so I don’t raise a child that becomes a criminal. And yes, sometimes that involves actually having fun. Just because I don’t feel I should sacrifice everything to live an ascetic lifestyle serving criminals, does not make me absolutely selfish. There’s much more nuance than that.
That would indeed be something.-
I firmly believe in my comment however I wish I could delete my comment because I didn't realize it was so upsetting to people.
Apologies!
-- OR --
"It's a good rule in life never to apologize. The right kind of people never want apologies, and the wrong kind take advantage of them."
a bit mangled. Full details:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2023/01/24/explain-friends/
"Apologizing easily and quickly is what millennials want"
Not gonna get it, though.
It's been observed that demanding an apology for everything is a weasel-y, performative, and Millennial thing, and the author is actually pushing back against that.
I see what the author is saying now. I don't think I'd go to either extreme, either always apologizing or never. Explanations are always nice when they're not hollow excuses, but IMO apologies are better when they're reserved for the times you sincerely fuck up and feel bad.
I'm an early Millennial, though, so maybe just less civilized than my younger brethren, lol.
Our criminal justice system is usually just completely ignored by people. Having any awareness and discussion of it at all is an improvement, IMO.
There are many forms of crimes, dar say majority, that don't cause great harm to others (eg theft, drug possession). For those, and the > 0% falsely/wrongfully incarcerated, you should have empathy in general for prisoners and expect humane conditions.
That’s a matter of opinion. 2/3s of America cannot afford a $400 emergency expense. If you steal and crash someone’s car, and that causes the individual to lose their job while the insurance is being figured out, their kids could spend the next few months in serious suffering.
What about smaller crimes, like shoplifting? 44% of our economy is small businesses; steal from them when they are already at the edge of a knife, treat it like it’s nothing, and you’ll break real families.
You have no conception of how much a “small” theft can injure most people.
As for drug possession; that imprisonment is quite possibly the best thing you can do for them compared to them overdosing on a street corner. Any mother would have their child eat Nutraloaf for 5 years straight than overdose on a public road.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramark#Food_safety_issues
I look forward to seeing a case against the manufacturer in the supreme court.
Rather than punishing tools let's punish perpetrators - the ones that came up with the idea.
Unless a certain 6 of the current 9 justices miraculously find their way off the court in the next couple months, you’ll be looking forward to this practice continuing either way.
Cut the hyperbole. From the description in the OP it just flavorless with bad texture. It's not great but nowhere close to "simulated poison" or "mock execution".
>it makes the inmate feel like they are starving even though they aren't.
Where is this from? The OP specifically mentions that he "felt so full and lethargic that I skipped dinner and the following breakfast".
> so intrinsically disagreeable that my throat nearly closed up reflexively.
and then:
> That night, my stomach’s rebellion against the loaf was anything but neutral. I felt so full and lethargic that I skipped dinner and the following breakfast.
...followed by a euphemism for serious diarrhea.
I'd encourage you to call poison control with those symptoms. Then consider what you would do if you had a kid or loved one with those symptoms and they ate "something" they didn't know what it was. Regarding starving, they feel like they have not eaten, but rather have been poisoned and can no longer eat more. That's not eating.
I did. You cherrypicked one part, which is seemingly contradicted by other parts of the paragraph:
"The mushy, disturbingly uniform innards recalled the thick, pulpy aftermath of something you dissected in biology class: so intrinsically disagreeable that my throat nearly closed up reflexively. But the funny thing about Nutraloaf is the taste. It’s not awful, nor is it especially good. I kept trying to detect any individual element—carrot? egg?—and failing. Nutraloaf tastes blank, as though someone physically removed all hints of flavor."
The author admits that taste isn't even bad, so presumably his body is disagreeing with the texture. Maybe I care about texture less than the average person, or the scientists at Aramark managed to make something so textually bad that it transcends normal foods, but I can't imagine something so textually bad that it tastes anywhere close to literal poison. Underneath the writer's flourish, I don't see anything to suggest it's not anything worse than my previous assessment of "just flavorless with bad texture".
>...followed by a euphemism for serious diarrhea.
Besides the problem reading way too much in between the lines, I can't think of any plausible reason how the food can cause diarrhea. After all, the blandless/bad texture can plausibly describe meal replacements like soylent or meal squares, and those seem to sell well enough to suggest they don't give people gastric distress.
>I'd encourage you to call poison control with those symptoms. Then consider what you would do if you had a kid or loved one with those symptoms and they ate "something" they didn't know what it was. Regarding starving, they feel like they have not eaten, but rather have been poisoned and can no longer eat more. That's not eating.
I know you're trying really hard to push to "this is poison" angle, but this is just silly. The only reason why you'd call poison control in that case is that there's a plausible chance that household chemicals were consumed. I seriously doubt you're going to call poison control that absent that possibility (eg. your kid coming home from school with upset stomach). Nutriloaf, as bad as it is texture wise, doesn't contain any toxic chemicals. It just tastes bland and has bad texture.
People complain about Taco Bell giving them diarrhea for similar reasons.
I said it was described as what was essentially a "simulated poison," because force feeding it to people it is analogous to how a mock execution uses "simulated" click of a trigger- it's not poisoning people and firing blanks isn't killing them- but they are both simulated acts intended to force compliance. This isn't "bland," it's manufacturing shit that doesn't kill you immediately and forcing people to eat it.
I did not say it was poison, but I'd be pretty suspicious of what your interest is on this one. try not to make it sound like you've been torturing people.
It's designed to be bland. Everything else is your conjecture. Moreover, what even is "something other than food"? Like I said in my previous comment, people seem to eat ultraprocessed foods like soylent and mealsquares just fine, and those are probably even further from what "food" actually is. At least with nutriloaf you can make out pieces of the constituent ingredients.
>I said it was described as what was essentially a "simulated poison," because force feeding it to people it is analogous to how a mock execution uses "simulated" click of a trigger
No, simulated poison would be feeding you denatonium or something. Eating nutriloaf might not be the most appetizing, but based on the ingredients it's nowhere close to eating actual poison. I looked at other sources[1] and so far as I can tell, it's just bland. I also found a lawsuit by an inmate that alleges it was making him sick, but aside from him and the dining critic, I can't find any evidence that it's causing sickness on a large scale, which would be expected given how many institution use it. Maybe it really is "simulated poison" to a few % of people, and in those cases I'd agree it would be considered cruel and unusual punishment, but people who get sick from milk or taco bell, that doesn't mean milk or taco bell is "simulated poison".
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/01/02/256605441/pu...
>I did not say it was poison, but I'd be pretty suspicious of what your interest is on this one. try not to make it sound like you've been torturing people.
If you have to resort to questioning motives and borderline implying that I torture people, it's probably a sign that you don't have actual responses to the object level question and want to derail the discussion into something else.
This seems like the latter.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6743246/
(as an aside: bland food won't work well on someone who lost their sense of smell from long covid, and prison populations were heavily affected)
In a detention center, you get a spoon to eat with, rehabilitation, a knife and fork. Other living conditions are inline with that.
You seem to think all humans are the same, well adjusted, able to readily and happily change to live with others, and so on.
The truth is, many people in jail are indeed stabbing others in jail for "no reason", as in "no reason most would consider valid".
There are indeed issues with the US prison system, or so I've read, but I assure you that inmates in prisons are known, world wide, to get stabby without cause. Here's a primary example...You know you can punch someone in the head instead of stabbing, yes?
This continues down to "talking instead of physical violence", but by saying stabbing is the result of poor conditions, you're saying stabbing is the sensible result of any lack of joy.
There's a whole body of complicated philosophy about what criminal law should do, whether it's about avenging victims or rehabilitating offenders or deterrance or profit motive, but I don't think we even need to get into that because a fundamental assumption even having that conversation requires is that the things the state locks people up for are legitimate and this is at this point the exception for me rather than the rule
Would evidence change your belief?
> Violent offenses account for over 3 in 5 people (62%) in state prisons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...
Here is a good page that has lots of info on the populations: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html
And a pie chart showing the difference in population between all the various types: https://static.prisonpolicy.org/images/pie2024-2X.webp
It's basically around half the total.
But it should be added that violent offenders are not the only category which harmed someone. Stealing from people harms them. Others might want to carve out shoplifting from this, but not me: for one thing, many stores are owned by identifiable human beings, and stealing from that store is stealing directly from them. For big chains or whatever, diffuse harm is still harm. On a personal level I care less about the latter, but this is not a distinction which should be enshrined into law. Theft is wrong.
By any sane breakdown, the large majority of people imprisoned or jailed are there directly due to harming other people. I lean towards policy which will minimize the amount of offenses which don't directly harm other people, personally. What crimes you feel fall into that category differs from person to person, though.
But the fact remains that pointing guns at people, stabbing them, stealing their car, breaking into their house, raping them: these harm the victims, directly, and those sorts of offenses are, in fact, the majority for which prisoners are imprisoned or jailed.
So, ignore those, and focus on the violent crimes again. Why do we have so many more violent criminals than anyone else? Do we still think this is just totally normal, and we can't do anything about it, so fuck it, lock them up and throw away the key? If we were talking about any other metric of a healthy population (child death rate, inability to get food or housing, infectious disease rate, etc) we would be actually working to change these numbers rather than just building more places to stick the people we don't want to think about. Maybe the fact that there are so many violent crimes is a good enough reason for us to start rethinking our policies, what makes our fucked up citizens act this way, and how we can begin to turn the tide.
Or we can give into apathy and say, fuck it.
"Criminal" is not about harm by the convict but about successful prosecution.
The consistent texture of the Nutraloaf may “help” here. My spouse lost her sense of smell (for other reasons than Covid) years ago and now relies heavily on textures for food enjoyment.
If it's a punishment specifically targeted at changing behavior, it may be successful by that measure.
That is insane ...