Retail cost, sure. You probably bought it at a store that maybe didn’t even make it on site, and has to pay rent on their property, pay decent wages and maybe benefits to its workers, etc.
If you buy that muffin wholesale and have unpaid/barely-paid prison workers put them out on trays, it’s a whole lot cheaper.
Yes. Done that too. It wasn’t even an awful diet.
I’ve got a single pasta noodle you can buy for $1.75.
Just saying.
In our prison system, the officers get meals provided to them, too.
The same meals the inmates get.
We have a significant problem with inmate obesity.
We have a similar situation with many officers too.
I’ve eaten prison food; not regularly, maybe 2 or 3 times a year. It’s not bad. Not great, but not bad.
We’re working on paring back the calories provided in the meals we serve, both to save costs, and to try to keep these guys from packing on the pounds.
We’ve a HUGE book relating to dietary and nutrition policy, spelling out just what nutritional standards must be met.
We also provide medically indicated diets, such as low protein, low salt, low fat, renal failure diet, certain allergy diets.
It is not easy to feed 23,000 inmates 3 times a day.
Any idea what it costs?
More than my muffin?
Beans and rice are cheap and nutritious.
Edited to add: According to my husband, who works for Florida DOC, they spend $3.50 per day, per inmate, on meals.
How could anyone, ever, nevermind an entire lawmaking apparatus, think this could be a good idea ? It’s… mindboggling, seriously.
Ramen, maybe?
For a serious answer - buy dry beans, grains, and vegetables on the turn.
Let’s see - 100 lb bags of pinto beans: $20.31 (cite, though I’m not sure it’s 100% accurate - they also claim to sell 100 lb bag of pintos for $300, too.)
The rule of thumb I’ve been using when I soak my beans is that they gain 2-3 lbs weight after soaking. So, that’s about 300-400 pounds of pre-cooking weight beans. Cooking the beans takes a while, but doesn’t really remove water, since most cooking methods for them are wet. According to this site, a single cup serving of beans is 171 grams, or about a 2.65 servings per pound of soaked beans. High in fiber, and fairly low calorie. So, our 100 lb bag, comes out to roughly (300 lbs wet beans * 2.65 servings per pound wet beans = 795 portions) 800 portions. With a per portion cost of 2.5 cents. (Assuming that prep costs are figured separately.) Though - to take that site’s calorie count as gospel, you’d need 7.7 servings of pintos to make up for an 1800 calorie per day diet. Or you could feed someone on pintos, alone, at 1800 calories/day for under 20 cents a day.
Do a lot of bean soups, beans and rice, etc. And you can get a number of filling, and depending on how you care to splurge on extras like veggies, even healthy foods for pretty cheap portion costs.
Where the expenses comes in would be both the prep time and the hidden preparation costs, and then in adding flavor to the meal.
ETA: It’s not my claim that pinto beans alone would make for a balanced diet, just using that as a way to point to how one could get the bulk of a diet’s calories on the cheap.
He probably also provided malk.
Rest assured, there was precious little beff or loobster involved.
Now with vitamin R!
I may be cheap, but I’m not easy.
About twenty five cents a day per individual in New York. Surprising but it’s economics of scale.
In your estimation are such humane standards the norm, or the exception?
It’s relatively easy with a simple understanding of food economics. The diet consists almost entirely of fat, and simple and complex carbohydrates. When you’re buying in that kind of bulk, it’s easy. It’s the primary reason that poverty-level blacks are morbidly overweight—they can’t afford to eat a proper diet.
ETA: I see that many others have provided better answers before me. I was trying to get to bed, so I just jumped to the end of the thread and hammered out a quickie. Everything that was said above pretty much nails it.
Spend thrift You should have cut those meals in half!
Pffft! luxury!
I’ve read accounts (and I’m not particularly inclinded to disbelieve them) of how in Thai prisons inmates would feed the wholly inedible chow to the cockroaches in order to faten them up for later consumption.
I feel an equal amount of pity for the prisoners and the roaches…
Lets hope that sherriff never see’s the movie soylent green!