Prison Radio
Spoon Jackson

Yes, I know, who cares what food you feed the animals. To look at the prison menu and how the food is described, you’d think you’re getting delicious and real food. Only what is served is nothing like the menu. It’s like getting a big bag of chips with a pretty picture on the cover, but inside only air. The so-called cheese they serve does not even melt. The chicken, beef, fish, and turkey are all 99 percent soy, mixed with some lumpy, bubbly, stuff. This magical soy patty, that’s said to be meatloaf, hamburger, steak, fish, chicken, and turkey, and also pancakes. Yes, the same hunk of cardboard they try to pass it off as pancakes. There’s no turkey in a turkey, no chicken in the chicken, no fish in the fish and no beef in the beef.

Every day, the food smells the same, like moldy slop, and not the fresh garbage you feed your hogs. Cabbage casserole was served today. I adore cabbage casserole and it would have been fine if there was just a sliver of cabbage offered in it. There was some dirty brown-like-sponge sprinkles that looked like pale rotted ground beef.

I found out a few days ago that I am a Type-2 diabetic. Medical staff here at the prison tells me that I should not eat this or that, and that nearly all the foods on the institutional menu are bad for diabetes. There are no diabetic diets here and expect you to fend for yourself, without any healthy diabetic foods to choose from.

Diabetics are provided with the exact same food as non-diabetics. Medical staff then advises diabetics not to consume most of the food on the regular tray, yet there are no alternative foods offered. I suppo- I suppose they want me to be a diabetic [inaudible] and live off all the air. All the [inaudible] sugar-free nutrients in the air.

I spoke with a free cook recently who gets paid to cook, and I asked him would he eat any of the food he prepared or oversaw. He smiled disgustingly and said: “Hell no, you could not pay me to eat it.”

(Sound of a cell door closing.) These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.