For the four years Heile Gantan was behind bars in California, she experienced frequent hunger.

To lessen its pangs, she filled up on packets of dry oatmeal she purchased in the commissary, with “no water, no milk, no anything. It was really just filler food. That was a constant theme throughout my incarceration: How can I fill up my stomach?”

Deprivation turned into bingeing. She thought, “‘Okay, I’m going to consume all the [cereal] I can get my hands on, so I’m not hungry when I go to sleep.’”

That became an unfortunate pattern—one she brought home after finishing her sentence. Back with her family, she stuffed herself with bread and also began hoarding, fearful that she wouldn’t have all the food she wanted or needed. “That habit was really hard for me to break, the thought of, ‘I may not have this tomorrow,’” she said.

Gantan is now a research fellow with Impact Justice (IJ), a justice-reform nonprofit. Over a span of 18 months, the organization researched and surveyed 250 formerly incarcerated people in 41 states, family members, and prison employees for a December 2020 report that detailed the disordered eating and other effects of insufficient diets that people experience while serving time. Those effects can linger well after people are released.

Served up in too-scant portions or even withheld, food in jails and prisons can instigate or exacerbate diet-related health issues, coping behaviors, and food insecurity that are already prevalent among communities of color that bear the brunt of mass incarceration.

The abysmal quality of food in carceral settings is well-documented. High in sodium and sugar, the diet in our nation’s jails and prisons is severely lacking in healthy foods. More often than not, it’s carb-heavy and ultra-processed fare. It’s also frequently rotten, moldy, or vermin-infested. And there’s rarely enough of the food to appropriately nourish. As a result, “a positive relationship with food—an essential part of being human—is denied every day to incarcerated people,” wrote the IJ report authors.

Due to unhealthy food, people within the carceral system experience high rates of diabetes and heart disease; mental health and behavior issues; and illnesses due to foodborne pathogens.

Read the full article about prison jail food by Lela Nargi at The Counter.