Undercover prisoners describe what prison food is really like

Screenshot/A&E

To keep costs down, prisons do not offer gourmet meals.

Several participants in the A&E documentary series “60 Days In” found out the hard way. The show follows seven undercover inmates who spend two months in an Indiana prison under false identities to expose problems with the system.

In fact, some of the food the inmates ate barely resembled the kind of food you’d find on any plate outside of a bar. Clark County Jail spends about $1 on each inmate’s meal, an A&E official confirmed, and participants throughout the series suggested the shoestring budget was obvious.

Barbra, one of the program’s participants, told Business Insider:

The is the worst the only meal I ever got in prison was beans. That was literally the entire meal. Beans with disgusting little wormy things on them, served with raw, uncooked onions and a small piece of dried cornbread.

It was a dinner meal and if you didn’t want to eat it, you were usually hungry for 14 hours until breakfast the next morning. For me, the meal was so bad that I started skipping it for dinner and starving myself until breakfast the next morning. It was literally inedible to me.

Screenshot/A&E

In other prisons and jails across the country, meal budgets are as low as $0.56, according to The Marshall Project, a nonprofit publication that covers the U.S. criminal justice system. Meal standards are regulated by local, state and federal laws.

Two A&E-produced companion videos show just how bad things can get. One video shows a grim side of “prison fish and chips” — sardines, bread, a few potato chips and a spoonful of mysterious “white sauce” unceremoniously thrown onto the plate.

“The food is depressing, the landscape is depressing” Tami, another contestant, said in a scene in the show’s second episode:I mean, if you weren’t in a state of deep depression when you came here, you’d feel it a little bit.

Another video shows how to make “prison pizza” — overcooked ramen noodles and crackers with salsa, spray cheese, and pieces of processed meat. Prisoners can make this dish by combining enough ingredients purchased from the prison commissary, a sort of store where prisoners can buy basic supplies like toiletries, as well as groceries.

Several scenes in the series show the role of food in the social lives of prisoners. In one scene from the third episode, which airs Thursday, a contestant named Zac wins an invitation to a “slam,” a dinner of precinct food held in his cell.

In an earlier episode, Zac knows the group has accepted him when an inmate hands him a bag of ramen noodles.

“There, ramen is like regular currency. It’s like gold,” he said in episode three.

Screenshot/A&EOn special occasions, like birthdays or the last day in prison, inmates make each other “prison cake,” Barbra told Business Insider. Inmates make a cake out of crushed peanut butter cookies, then layer it with melted Reese’s Cups and cappuccino mix.

Then they melt a Hershey chocolate bar by leaving it in a cup of microwave water with a paper wrapper. Once it melts, they can tear off a corner of the wrapper and pour the chocolate over the cake.

Once baked, the cake should be “cooled” by placing it in a bowl of ice for two hours.

“In prison, you learn to be very innovative in food preparation,” Barbra said.

The third episode of the series will air on Thursday at 10pm ET on A&E.

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