I got lactase tablets put on our canteen for over a year. With over 1500 inmates in there at any one time, noone bought any.
Inmates cannot have such products shipped into them.
It’s not worth taking up shelf space for a product noone will buy, and that isn’t medically necessary for 99.999% of the population.
Our standard diet is now high fiber, with a low glycemic index. It works fine for diabetics.
When we did have a diabetic diet, 90% of the diabetics signed off of it anyway. Despite counselling. :dubious:
The majority of inmates whom we put on calorie-controlled diets cheated on them, buying food from canteen or getting it from other inmates. They gained weight consistently on their diet trays, and hence got taken off of them.
You won’t get offered raw onion very often in our system. 
I’ve read Jeffrey Archer’s A Prison Diary II, about his stay in a medium security prison. He publishes a facsimile of the weekly menu. IIRC, there was a normal menu, a “healthy option”, a vegetarian and a halal menu.ISTR that he chose the vegetarian meals, on the basis that mass-produced non-veg meals aren’t well made.He did the same with airline food.
For a second, I read that as “Jeffrey *Dahmer’s *A Prison Diary II,” and though, “Man, if there was ever a guy who shouldn’t be picky about the meat he’s eating…” :smack:
In an effort to endumben this enlightening thread, I thought I’d offer up Robot Chicken’s exploration of prison dietary issues. (video, maybe NSFW)
I can eat just about any sort of COOKED or dried allium, which means that I can and do enjoy grilled onions on occasion. I haven’t really experimented with the various types since I made the connection between eating raw allium and having several days’ worth of gastric distress. I’m just not that willing to undergo the pain and inconvenience.
I was rather confused, for a while, because I was keeping a journal, and sometimes I’d have a bad reaction when I had onion, and sometimes I didn’t. I wasn’t making the distinction between raw and cooked or dried onion.
At any rate, a person doesn’t have to actually be allergic to something for it to cause problems. And that was my point.
Or maybe Jesus after he rose from the dead.
A truly healthy diet is disliked by about 95% of our inmate population, frankly. They want their comfort foods, and not veggie burgers, high fiber grains, or complete protein soy chow.
Healthy foods, when made available on canteen, do not get purchased enough to justify stocking them. Ramen noodles, Little Debbie snack cakes, Jerky treats, pork rinds, chips, and vienna sausages are the popular items.
And Jack Mack. Don’t forget that.
Okay, wow. Just looked that up. New one for me.
Our canteen doesn’t have mackeral. Tuna in a pouch and salmon flakes in a packet. Though sardines are in a can.
I can see sardines being used, while the assailant yells “go fish!”. 
This is for the prison produced food, for special diets the menu is not distributed across the main population, there is no point since they do not have the option of selecting such meals- such diets mus be referred through various means from faith workers or medical practitioners.
Kosher is extremely rare in UK prisons, so few Jews in them and its true for other groups such as Mormons and Jehovahs - and the vegetarian diet is an acceptable diet for many differant groups.
The medical diets are bought in as needed, which for certain long terms jails is pretty much every day, the prison kitchen staff do not have the time to produce such limited batches and it is not economic to employ enough staff to do it.
Some medical diets are temporary, depending upon the need, such as post op care, others are more permanent such as diabetic or the occasional thyroid case.
Lee Boyd Malvo (the assistant DC sniper) was intially vegetarian when first imprisoned. Here is an article about the vegetable loaf that the prison system serves.
casdave thanks for the information.
Who determines what constitutes “nonstandard”? For example, Jainism is an ancient and well-established religion with very peculiar dietary restrictions:
During some religious fasting periods, there are even more restrictions (no green vegetables, for example).
Though there are perhaps 12 millions Jains in the world, there can’t be more than a few thousand in the US. If one of them found himself in your prison, would his diet be accommodated, or would it be rejected as nonstandard?
While there are a relatively large number of religions that are recognized and accomodated by special policies in New York, Jainism is not one of them. A Jain would have to live within the regular dietary procedures.
There was a similar thread here a few years ago, although as I recall, the discussion was focused primarily on Kosher meals.