In the U.S., two groups living under institutional care, incarcerated individuals and nursing home residents, are routinely starved of proper nutrition.
Not because the food is scarce, but because cost-cutting and profit-driven contracts dictate what they eat. Both groups face systemic neglect that goes far beyond empty stomachs.
As Daniel Rosen of the Coalition for Carceral Nutrition put it:
“Three times a day, when we hand them a tray of slop, we tell incarcerated people exactly what we think of them. And that has an impact on how people think of themselves. We feed incarcerated people — who have no choice — in all the ways we know are unhealthy. If we want people to be better neighbors and community members when they come home from incarceration, we have to treat them with dignity and afford them the ability to choose their own health and well-being, as a start.”
Incarcerated Individuals: Hidden Hunger
According to the Vera Institute of Justice, most states allocate less than $3 per day for prison food services. This minimal spending often results in meals that are nutritionally deficient and sometimes unsafe.
A 2020 survey by Impact Justice found that 75% of incarcerated individuals reported being served spoiled food, and over half lacked access to fresh fruits and vegetables.
Private contractors, such as the Keefe Group, dominate prison food services, creating a profit-driven system with little accountability. This setup can lead to a perverse incentive, where substandard meals push inmates to purchase overpriced commissary items, further burdening them financially.
When meals are inedible, incarcerated people must turn to overpriced commissary items; another profit stream for the same companies. If they can’t afford commissary?
They starve.
Sarah Stillman’s investigative article, “Starved in Jail,” published in The New Yorker on April 21, 2025, delves into the harrowing case of Mary Faith Casey, a woman who died from prolonged starvation while incarcerated in a county jail. The piece not only recounts Mary’s personal tragedy but also exposes a broader, systemic issue: the alarming number of incarcerated individuals dying from neglect, particularly due to lack of food and water, even as private companies are compensated millions for their care.
Carlin’s subsequent quest for answers revealed what so many of us already know: that a disturbing pattern of neglect and abuse exists within the jail system, often concealed by private healthcare contractors and county officials.
But like prisons and now schools, nursing homes are another system failing to meet nutritional standards.
Nursing Home Residents: Undernourished in Their Final Years
The parallels don’t stop at prison gates or the school-to-prison pipeline. Nursing home residents also face systemic malnutrition. An MLive investigation found that many facilities spend less than $10 a day per resident on food.
Despite government reimbursements, the lack of transparency and oversight means increased funding doesn’t guarantee better meals. Residents often rely on a federal personal needs allowance of just $30 a month (a figure frozen since 1987) to buy snacks and supplements.
The result? Some of our most vulnerable elders live out their last years malnourished in plain sight.
A Shared Struggle
Both incarcerated people and nursing home residents are fed by systems that prize cost-cutting over care, with private contractors profiting while basic nutritional needs go unmet.
The issue is not just about food; it’s about dignity, health, and what society believes these people are “worth.”
Need More Insight?
Prison Journalism Project author, Jeffrey McKee, has prepared a manifesto on another common issue in Prison: food contamination. In addition to scurvy and inadequate meal portions, it’s a very big problem. Read that here.
Call to Action
It’s not enough to say “prison food is bad.”
As Daniel’s Prison Journalism Project article notes, the deeper issue is that food in prisons is a reflection of institutional contempt. By serving slop, we normalize neglect. The same is true of nursing home residents and schools; we somehow accept the quiet starvation of not just the elderly, but our future.
Here’s what you can do:
- Read and share the work of advocates like Daniel Rosen and the Coalition for Carceral Nutrition.
- Demand transparency in government contracts with food vendors.
- Push for policy change that raises food budgets and updates allowances stuck in the 1980s.
- Support incarcerated and elder voices who are directly impacted by these injustices.
Food is never just food. It’s a measure of the value we place on human life.
And right now, the message we’re sending is shameful.
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