In another life, I had 3 teenagers— and they were all 3-sport season athletes.
It is tempting to reminisce about this one precious time in our family’s life— the drama-filled highs and lows of competition; the pride of seeing my children overcome obstacles within themselves and as part of a team.
But I will stop there.
You know what else I vividly recall about that time?
Our grocery bill.
During that season, we could have financed a fully furnished second home— on the water— with the money we spent feeding our kids. I would buy 6 gallons of milk a week and still run out. I shopped sales and clipped coupons and went without other things to nourish the ravenous people in my charge.
…Can we just take a brief moment of silence, please, for the moms and dads doing this now under the current state of inflation? Yikes.
Whenever I hear someone reference the “three hots and a cot” assumption of prison life, I brand them ignorant. Sorry-not-sorry.
In my recent exposé about the weight of guilt, I mentioned food. In truth, the most conflicting aspect of my everyday life is now mealtime.
After my son was arrested, I broke down most dramatically, and most often, in my kitchen. I still have a hard time making his favorite meals. I gingerly approach holiday tables knowing, inevitably, I will hide from everyone else to cry privately because I cannot pass him a plate.
This month, it will be no less a struggle than any other March 17th of recent years. This is, historically, a day that my oldest would eat me out of not one, but two, prepared corned beef briskets, pounds of potatoes, and Irish soda bread. Even when he no longer lived at home, he made the drive to my house as a pilgrimage.
Instead of welcoming him home, I now get to imagine him in a cell with a faded melamine tray of whatever soggy, pressed, processed, reheated “food product” they are serving up that day.
Sláinte, my boy.
For the record, American prisoners are not required to get 3 “hots”— in fact, there are no national standardized guidelines for how and when our incarcerated population eats. Depending on the facility, county, state, and region wherein you are picked up and imprisoned, it will vary. The variance, however, does not rise much above “keep them alive” rations.
Fun fact: Our DOC stipulates that hot food only be offered twice daily. As such, individuals in confinement get 2 “warmed” meals per day. The 3rd is cold. Of course, 2 warm meals are only the rule when emergencies or other factors (i.e., Covid, staffing shortages) prevent maintenance of food-safe temperatures. In that instance, our loved ones get 3-colds; 2 pieces of bread and a dollop of cold mystery “meat” or baloney for every meal. See an example below.1
‘3 hots and a cot’ is a misnomer, so— we can stop saying it.
Nutritional guidelines for the average 5’9”, 200 lb. American male set daily caloric intake needs at 2,800 (cals) per day. That is considered enough to maintain adequate mental and physical energy, assuming he’s moderately active.
The average caloric intake of an American prisoner is, on paper, ‘consistent’ with the “Dietary Guidelines for Americans” formulated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture.
Spoiler Alert: Paper formulations and system operations are not the same.
If you are interested, you can use the USDA online calculator to estimate how many calories you need per day in order to “prevent chronic diseases and promote health.” Dieticians will tell you that caloric and nutrient intake are much more nuanced, taking health status and other factors into consideration (e.g., stress levels, sleep quality, life stage), but for our purposes let’s use the “official” government figures.
I put my son’s stats into their little boxes and the recommendation was that he, assuming a low-active range of activity, requires over 3,100 calories per day.
In reality, he estimates that he gets somewhere closer to 1600-1800 cals a day.
The evidence?
He has lost 40 lbs. since he was incarcerated.
“Well, your ‘baby boy’ is a PRiSoNeR so—”
Regardless of gross societal distain and our collective disregard of “prisoners” as a class of people deserving zero consideration, I am a mother. I have grown 4 people from their microscopic origins and watched each of them take in oxygen on planet Earth for the first time. Every hair on their heads, cell in their bodies, and every functioning piece of them came from the depletion of my own calcium, magnesium, iron, and folate stores. I then fed and nurtured their growth for a combined 61 years— not including 36 months of pregnancy.
Come at me, bro.
Full disclosure: my degree is in health psychology.
This is a specialized field of psychology that studies how biological, social, and psychological factors influence health and illness. We do therapy, but we take it a step further—
Health psychs look at the physical manifestations of stress, we look at physical precursors to addiction and anxiety and ADHD— we discuss everything from impotence to immunity to illness before we create therapeutic treatment plans which aid our clients to improve their sleep, diet, and movement.
Perhaps this is why my son’s inability to access vital nutrients, for years on end, has me perched upon a particular edge of fury.
In psych 101, we all learned about Maslow and his hierarchy of needs theory. Used in nearly every facet of human endeavoring since the 1950’s including child development, education, personal development, career planning, coaching, healthcare, and business— this theory describes five distinct levels of innate human need that motivate people to evolve and achieve their highest potential. Here’s a quick refresher:
At the base of our existence is a need for physiological stability. Food, air, water, sleep, and relative health are non-negotiables for human success. If these base components of our lives are unfulfilled, we become more consumed with attaining them— to the loss of all other personal evolution. In short, we get stuck in survival mode.
Human beings cannot move into higher ordered thinking, attain greater social skill, nor achieve personal growth if we are struggling at physiological Ground Zero. There will be no learning nor improvement in morality or socialization when we are near starving, can’t breathe, are freezing or sick or we are living under constant threat in a physically unstable or unhealthy environment.
This is old science. This is basic, undisputed psychology. It’s one of the reasons that public schools are now providing free meals to all students. If we are hangry, our pre-frontal cortex becomes impaired— problem-solving and adaptability sharply decline. Impulsivity goes up; self-control goes down.
There is much to be said about the absolute folly of supporting our antiquated corrections models (based on human deprivation) as “rehabilitative.” I’ll write more on this in future posts where there is space but, for today, it is enough to say that simply improving prison food would move the needle toward improving self-correction and the social aims of any prison sentence.
Bad food leads to bad moods. Poor diets lead to illness and chronic dis-ease. Insufficient food causes unrest, stealing, in-fighting, and in many cases— riots.