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Food-Related Outbreaks Sicken Prisoners Six Times More Often

Prison food usually makes news only when blamed for hunger strikes or riots or a supplier is found providing rancid or insect-infested food. Yet it also poses an important but little-studied public health issue, recently tackled by a research team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which published a study showing outbreaks

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Inadequate Prison Food Linked to Bad Behavior

POOR NUTRITION CAN PLAY A ROLE IN VIOLENT AND CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR. IMAGE CREDIT: THE MARSHALL PROJECT According to research, despite the fact that eating a plant-based diet can help prevent and even reverse some of the top killer diseases in the Western world, and can be more effective than medication and surgery, the typical American diet

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Lawsuit upholds atrocity of forcing inmates to drink tainted water

After filing a lawsuit in 2014, four prisoners at Wallace Pack Unit, Navasota, Texas, will hopefully be feeling some relief after US District Judge Keith Ellison recently gave the prison 15 days to replace the water supply. However, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice says it plans to appeal the ruling, with a spokesman saying

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You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Love a Kosher Prison Meal

By Dianne Frazee-Walker

Tired of prison food? Claim Judaism.

Frequent flyers have been doing it for years. After all, kosher food tastes better.

Gentile prisoners have caught on to what they have to do to exchange mundane fare for a decadent spread. The new trend is to pass for Jewish to legally order a meal as close to gourmet as it gets behind bars.

Even prison gang members are now going Kosher so they can partake in private dining with other gang members and quietly make plans around the meal table. Kosher meal subscribers are seated together for religious reasons.

Pleading Judaism to swap out a tray of mediocre food for fresh tastier morsels is a no brainer as long as you are not an inmate incarcerated in a Florida prison. Despite Florida having the third largest prison system in the U.S., it is one of only 15 states that no longer offers inmates a kosher diet system wide.

Serving kosher food in prison to suitable inmates has become a court approved contemporary practice in most states, however, the latest boom in non-Jewish inmates ordering kosher cuisine has alerted prison authorities and spoiling chow time for some main line diners.

Michael D. Crews, upcoming secretary of the Department of Corrections is already expressing concerns about the expense of religious meals. He predicts the last staggering calculation of 4,417 inmate requests for special meals will multiply if the program is delivered. This prophecy has Senator Greg Evers, the Republican chairman of the Senate Justice Committee inquiring, “Is bread and water considered kosher? Just a thought. Just a thought.”

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Pirates and Prisoners: Scurvy, Beriberi, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons

It was centuries ago when sailors at sea had to worry about great dangers, spending many months and years on the ocean.  The hazards of adverse weather, and rudimentary ship-building technologies.  No access to medicine or doctors, and poor hygiene.  Pirates! For the most part, though, the biggest barrier to the sailor’s health was diet. 

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Three Hots and a Cot

By Robert Tashbook

I’ve always wanted to be a travel writer, staying in exclusive resorts, eating meals fit for a king. An ad in a writing magazine finally provided my big break. They wanted neophyte travel writers seeking to get into this exciting business. The only requirement was to visit an appropriate location and write a review. They would select the best one and offer the writer a contract.

Luckily for me, I was currently at a fine establishment — part of a national chain with over 100 locations — offering both lodging and dining. Hopefully then, this review will launch me on my new career.

Security seems to be the watchword at this resort. The burnished aluminum security bars on the tinted windows are more for show, but the twenty-four hour armed guard at the front, the multiple razor-wire topped fences, and the roving patrols really drove the point home. Unfortunately, when I learned most of the fifty-foot tall perimeter guard posts were unmanned, I began to doubt that the advertised “500,000 volt electric fence” was strong enough to do more than roast marshmallows.

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