Prison food, in all its serving-line glory, is not often mentioned as the highlight of the incarceration experience. Legend holds, however unfairly, that the taste and color of the daily victuals tend toward gray.
Now the kitchens that feed 145,000 federal prisoners will face the challenges of tofu.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons has announced it will begin offering a no-flesh diet to inmates who prefer, for reasons of faith or taste, a meal that contains neither beef nor fish nor chicken. A spokesman attributed the move to 'the changing dietary habits of the inmate population.'
In some institutions, a serving line will be dedicated to the vegetarian choices--the fried eggplant, cottage cheese and chickenless chicken a la king. In others, inmates will be required to accept one or the other, flesh or no flesh, as their chosen gastronomic identity.
'We have, for instance, roast beef. For those who don't eat flesh, they might have peanut butter,' said Danny M. Williams, food service administrator at the federal prison in Yazoo City, Miss., where 90 prisoners already receive special meals for religious reasons.
'Say, for instance, if we're serving hamburgers on a Wednesday lunch, and french fries,' Williams explained. 'Their menu might consist of chopped cabbage, chopped tomatoes, cottage cheese, vegetarian beans and kosher-approved fruit punch.'
In Marion, Ill., Williams's counterpart sounded enthusiastic recetnly as he talked about the prospective changes, even if the variety of choices seems daunting. David Globun said tofu options are tasting better and better.
'I have some samples right here of some soy-like beef substitute. It's a dehydrated product,' Globun said. 'There's so many of them out there, I'm trying them to see which ones are good. I have 88 inmates who work in the kitchen. When we cook something, we all sample it and we share our opinions.'
At Marion, spokesman Mark Munson reported, the prisoners are 'assaultive, they're predators, they're escape risks.' In the early stages of their stays, they eat alone in their cells. About 10 percent of the 650 inmates from Marion and its more mellow prison camp neighbor are on meatless diets that Globun began offering in 1997. Another 10 percent choose the religious flesh-free menus.
Federal inmates sued the Bureau of Prisons in 1997 to demand vegan meals, prepared without animal products of any sort, including meat, fish, eggs or milk. On May 8, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, ruling that inmate Keith Maydak was likely to win on the merits, granted a temporary injunction requiring the Lewisburg, Pa., federal prison to serve him soy milk.
Maydak drew support from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Norfolk-based group whose mission statement is 'Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on or use for entertainment.' PETA official Bruce G. Friedrich said in an affidavit that he believes all people will one day abhor the murder of animals the same way they abhor the murder of humans.
Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley said the new food offerings had no connection to the lawsuit. Friedrich was skeptical, but he was enthusiastic about the outcome--'that all federal prisoners will have access to cruelty-free, healthy, vegan food at every meal.'