Billions Served: Prison Food Regimes, Nutritional Punishment, and Gastronomical Resistance

Chapter author: Anthony Ryan Hatch

Page author: Nataly Dickson

Summary
In this chapter, Anthony Ryan Hatch discusses how food is a powerful technology used for direct and indirect political struggles in prison environments (67). He divides his chapter into three sections, the first two being prison food regimes and nutritional punishment.These sections describe how food as technology works to punish and control prisoners. The third section titled “gastronomical resistance”, however, describes how prisoners use food as resistance against unjust treatment.

“Prison Food Regimes” addresses the unequal power relationships that structure the U.S. carceral food system. Food as technology operates as a symbol of power which transforms people’s bodies, cultures, and structures social relationships (69). More specifically, relationships between food production and consumption are of social power between prison and prisoners. This has been influenced by the three food regimes which have globally taken place in the past 400 years. Technology is implicated in the shift of prison food regimes from local suppliers to multinational food conglomerates. Part of these prison food regimes are prison farms, those of which still exist today (73). Prison farms use prison labor to keep costs of food low. Most prison systems, however, function under multinational food service conglomerates such as Aramark and Trinity Services Group (70).

“Nutritional Punishment” discusses how the quantity and nutritional quality of consumed food is used as a form of punishment. This section also addresses the legality of (or lack of) prison foods. Despite the fact that food impacts the physical and mental health of prisoners, prison foods are produced from the cheapest ingredients. Legally, there is no mandated number of meals, no number of calories that prisoners must receive, nor any regulations which determine the quantity or quality of prison foods. As a result, prison systems police and inspect the food’s sanitation or nutritional quality themselves (78).

“Gastronomical Resistance” describes how prisoners have used food and their bodies as counter-weapons. To be more specific, Hatch describes this as “gastronomical resistance” in which prisoners use their gastrointestinal systems to pushback against nutritional punishment as well as the overall injustices they face (77). This form of resistance is used to neutralize the power prisons have over prisoner bodies. An example of this is through the form of hunger strikes which can be used as a collective resistance. Some examples of this come from California, but in Alabama specifically, prisoners form a hunger strike in response to their unjust treatment. In this example, since the Alabama prison system could not use food as a form of punishment, they responded to this hunger strike by turning off the water to prisoner cells (78). Another form of gastronomical resistance is through hacking food. Hacking food consists of prisoners using the various, but limited foods purchased through a prison’s commissary. Prisoners use this to “minimize the everyday nutritional punishment they face, however, this hack is expensive for prisoners and those who pay for them, especially since prisons can inflate and thus profit from foods available in commissary (79).

Connection to other readings
Angela Davis' Are Prisons Obsolete and Alex Vitale's The End of Policing connect well with Hatch's chapter by providing broader conversations on the unjust treatment of prisoners in America's prison system. Both texts approach the conversation by questioning the justifications behind their existence by providing many examples of behind why the prison system is broken. Davis' text specifically addresses the businesses or corporations that have contracts with prisons that form a prison economy.

Connection to other chapters
Here are some links to other chapters that may be related (this section is meant to be done collectively by all class members)