Prison Food – Past and Present

The Best of British – prison food

A short article on past and present prison cuisine

I have always had an interest in food and cooking and it came as a particular delight when in my last five years of service, I became head of an Investigation and Audit team in one of London’s biggest prisons. Part of the team’s task was to inspect and report on conditions in prison kitchens.To enable me to undertake the work, I had to do a great deal of research and knowledge gathering to enable me to carry out this function. Food handling and hygiene being just one of the basic areas to cover. Food preparation techniques, balanced diets, specialist medical diets are all part of the daily life of a prison, or indeed any other type of institutional kitchen.

Every prison in Britain is inspected by an independent body, HM Prison Inspectorate, on an irregular basis. Therefore, it is essential that every prison kitchen is organized, maintained and managed at the very highest standard at all times. In the late 1980′s, HM Prison Service lost the safety of, “Crown Immunity”. This prevented any form of prosecution through the courts for any infringements of the law. The ‘Crown’ could never prosecute itself – The Crown verses Crown. In effect, it meant that a prison could now receive severe sanctions for poor performance in any area, particularly Health & Safety and catering. It could also mean that the prison kitchen could even be closed down if found to be in a poor state of management, maintenance or hygiene. This was highlighted very clearly in September of 2009 when 370 prisoners at London’s largest prison, HMP Wandsworth were struck down with salmonella poisoning. If a prison kitchen were suddenly ordered to close down, you can imagine the chaos this would cause. HMP Wandsworth is the largest prison in Western Europe and holds over 1,600 prisoners. How do you provide over 4,800 meals a day at very short notice? The only hope of keeping the roof on the jail is to ensure that the Emergency Contingency Planners have done their homework and an alternative system can be brought on line with immediate effect.

How it used to be

Wandsworth Prison was built in 1851. It was one of the earliest London prisons and was originally called the Surrey House of Corrections. Mayhew & Binney, in their 1868 edition of, “Criminal Prisons of London”, describe vividly the life inside the London prisons in the 1800′s. Food did not seem very high on the agenda of the prison system at this time. Containment seemed to be the priority. The Surrey House of Correction was indeed built to help to reduce overcrowding at the Houses of Correction at Brixton, Guildford and Kingston, where “jail fever” was rampant and prisoners were dying. When inspecting the Surrey House of Corrections in 1862, Mayhew and Binney noted the menu and diets of the various classes of prisoners held at the prison. Convicted prisoners employed at ‘hard labour’ for terms exceeding 21 days were allowed the following meals:

Breakfast 1 pint of oatmeal gruel and 6 oz of bread Dinner Sunday & Thursday 1 pint of soup and 8 oz of bread Dinner Tuesday & Saturday 3 oz of cooked meat without bone 8 oz bread ½ lb potatoes Dinner Monday, Wednesday & Friday 8 oz bread and 1 lb of potatoes Supper Same as breakfast

As you may well imagine, the low calorific and nutritional values of such a diet would lead to serious health problems – jail fever.

When I worked at High Down High Security prison in Surrey, we presented the Lord Lieutenant of the County with a framed copy of the recipe for Gruel. The Governor of the prison at the time, Stephen Prior, took the Lord Lieutenant and his wife home for dinner, and guess what was first on the menu – prison gruel. He actually loved it! So much so that he instructed his own chef to add it to his dinner party menus to impress his guests (I bet it did!).

This is the original recipe from the Surrey House of Corrections kitchen circa. 1862: Ingredients for Soup and Gruel: The soup to contain, per pint, 3 ounces of cooked meat, without bone, 3 ounces of potatoes, 1 ounce of barley, rice, or oatmeal, and 1 ounce of onions or leeks, with pepper and salt. The gruel to contain 2 ounces of oatmeal per pint. The gruel on alternate days to be sweetened with three quarter ounces of molasses or sugar and seasoned with salt.

In seasons when the potato crop has failed, 4 ounces of split peas made into a pudding may be occasionally substituted; but the change must not be made more than twice in each week. Boys under 14 years of age to be placed on the same diet as females.

The female diet was the same as the male prisoner diet with the exception that where the male received 8 oz of bread the female would receive 6 ounces.

For those prisoners serving less than seven days, the menu was very basic: Breakfast 1 pint of gruel Dinner 1 lb of bread Supper 1 pint of gruel

These prison diets lasted well into the 1900′s and bear no comparison to today’s prison food. Modern prisoners wouldn’t stand for it and the authorities could never allow it. Even the punishment diet of bread and water was removed from the Prison Rules in the 1960′s. The term, “Doing Porridge” still remains an avid description of someone who is in prison, referring of course, to the old diet of oatmeal gruel.

How it is now

Modern man requires around 2,500 calories each day to maintain body weight, women require slightly less. In the prisons of the 1800′s, a prisoner was lucky to obtain 500 calories per day without any opportunity to increase his intake. Overcrowding – three to a cell built for one and hard labour, soon consumed what little energy the prisoner had. Poor health, body lice and unsanitary conditions all led to the onset of jail fever – epidemic typhus.

Today, as well as obtaining a balanced and healthy prison diet, a prisoner can supplement his diet from the prison shop. Many prisoners are housed in single cells or dormitories and the overcrowding problems of the 1800′s no longer exist in our modern prisons. Modern health care programmes, physical fitness programmes and modern sanitatary conditions have all been introduced in recent years.

In the UK, a prison catering manager has about £1.87 ($4) to provide food for each inmate every day. Young offender institutions are allowed double this amount at £3.81 ($8) per day. The modern prison service of day has placed an emphasis on rehabilitation, although how successful this has been is debatable. Part of the rehabilitation process is to teach prisoners how to eat healthily and look after themselves on release. For the prison service’s part, new dietary regulations have been introduced in recent years which avoid the onset of health problems which ultimately reflect in the prisons health care budget. Long term prisoners are particularly at risk by poor diet and poor health care regimes. Diabetes, stroke and obesity-related illnesses are of particular concern.

Special diets are catered for now and include Muslim, kosher, Caribbean, diabetic and other medical diets are also provided. Catering managers are now specially trained to prepare these special diets. In many of the establishments I worked in, we even had Muslim and Jewish prisoners working in the kitchen to ensure that the food was cooked and prepared in the appropriate way. For the feast of Eid, the local mosques would deliver specially prepared food as a gift for Muslim prisoners. Likewise, the rabbi would arrange for kosher food to be delivered whenever Jewish feast days were celebrated. This would never have happened fifty years ago. It is also curios to note, the number of prisoners who convert to Islam when Ramadan is approaching.

So how have the diets and menus changed over the years. Health and nutrition remain a high priority in today’s prison kitchen. There has been a vast reduction in fried foods over recent years. Chips with everything no longer applies. An increase in fresh fruit and vegetables, wholegrain products and an increase in fish products, including oily fish have been introduced into prisons not only in Britain but in European and American prison establishments as well.

One of the best fed prisons in the world is in Italy, where prisoners work to produce organic fruit and vegetables, including olive oil. The prison has its own state of the art food production areas for manufacturing wine and orchard management. The whole operation is supervised by a professional management team. The prisoners benefit by eating all their own home grown food and are even allowed a small wine allowance to help reduce cholesterol levels and may even increase the ability to prevent some forms of cancer. Now, is that progress or what?

There seems to be some confusion as to what exactly prison food entails. As far as the general public is concerned, some of them still believe that gruel, bread and water is still the main prison diet. There are still many more who say that it should be.

They could not be further from the fact. As we have already stated, vast improvements have already been made to the prison diet. In most prisons in England and Wales, the supply of catering facilities has been privatised. Prisoners now have a choice which they can preselect on a weekly basis, usually with a choice of three or more main courses. The Christmas menus have improved immensely over the years and now provide prisoners with a much better Christmas dinner than they ever would eat outside prison. In many of the lower security prisons, local pensioners are invited into the prison to eat Christmas dinner with the inmates. After all, prisoners are still human beings and many take great pains to ensure that ‘granny’ and ‘granddad’ have a nice Christmas dinner.

So how might a modern prison menu look? First, the breakfast menu. In all English prisons each prisoner receives a breakfast pack which is issued the evening before for use the next morning. This will include a breakfast cereal, milk, tea bags, coffee whitener, sugar, brown or white bread, jam and margarine or butter type spread. They will also receive a weekly allowance of teabags and sugar to make themselves a cup of tea whenever they want to. Each cell will have its own kettle. The daily issue will also include special packs for vegans, vegetarians and various religious groups

For the midday and evening meals, nearly every prison now uses a pre-select system where a list of different meals are displayed for each day and every prisoner can order whatever meal he prefers. There are usually five or six alternatives to choose from. Fresh vegetables and fruit are served separately when each meal is collected. The following is just a sample obtained from the London prisons where the pre-select system has successfully been in operation for nearly ten years: Day one Midday meal Evening meal Vegetarian Pasta Bake Vegetable supreme Chicken & Mushroom pie Chicken Supreme Halal Jamaican Beef Patti Halal Chicken Curry Corned beef & Pickle Roll Grilled Gammon Jacket Potato & Coleslaw Pork pie salad

Day Two Vegetable Pancake roll Bean & Vegetable curry Breaded fish Chicken Chasseur Cheese & Beano Grill Halal Beef Casserole Cheese & Tomato Roll Fish in Parsley Sauce Jacket Potato & Tuna Vegetable Quiche Salad

Day Three Vegetarian Sausage & Egg Soya Lasagne Bacon, Sausage & Egg Minced Beef Lasagne Halal Sausage & Egg Halal Beef Italienne Turkey Salad Roll Rice & Bean Stuffed Pepper Salad Jacket Potato and Curried Beans Cheese Salad The pre-select system has progressed a long way since its introduction. Prisoners now have the opportunity to select from a range of choices. In the early days if you were not a registered vegetarian, you could not have a vegetarian meal. If you were not a Muslim, you couldn’t select a halal dish. Now, things have changed Prisoners can select whatever dish they prefer. They may eat vegetarian one day, halal the next. Its their choice. In general, all prisons have now attempted to embrace the Balance of Good Health model (Food Standards Agency 2001) and are providing a nutritionally balanced, and healthy diet. We have progressed a long way from the days of bread and water and a cup of gruel. Prisoners are not dying of typhus and malnutrition any more and prisons are much more comfortable and healthy paces to work in – both for prisoners and staff.

What will be the next phase? Will we see the introduction of self catering for prisoners? Each prison having its own supermarket. All prisons have there own version of the ‘corner shop’ where they can purchase food supplements and little luxuries to make life more bearable. It is not too much of a step to provide a supermarket and the means for prisoners to prepare their own food. Most of the catering facilities and prison shops are already privatised. I am sure that ASDA or Sainsbury’s or Walmart would jump at the chance of having an in-prison store with a captive clientele of nearly 2000 every day.

Debt Negotiation Firms – What Consumers Need to Know About Debt Settlement

Many US citizens are facing debts these days. People are looking to find the best way to get rid of their debts. The best way is the one by which you can overcome the debt without any burden on your finance, legally and ethically. The person already so much stressed out by debt burden would certainly don’t like to involve himself in complicated solutions.

The most advised way to get rid of your debt is to take help from the debt negotiations firms. These firms comprises of highly skilled individuals who are loaded with all the tools needed for successful debt negotiations. They are very well aware of how the relief programs work, what are limitations of lenders on most issues and what will be the best way to convince your creditor to benefit you as much as possible. Debt negotiation is a legal way of getting your debt reduced to an amount you can afford to pay. It is a technical procedure where, apart from convincing the creditor, you have to follow certain rules and regulation and avoid any violation of terms. The negotiation firms are experienced and take care of all such formalities.

After acquiring all the information about your current financial standing they start the process of debt negotiation. Negotiations are actually about convincing the creditor to grant you debt reduction. The reduction in debt is completely dependent on how your financial condition is portrayed before the creditor. The lender will grant you reduction only when he is completely sure of your poor financial condition. The debt negotiation firms know the techniques to make the creditor agree on terms advantageous to you. Better negotiations can reduce your debt up to 60%.

The remaining debt is easily payable with the help of a debt settlement company. You are just required to make a monthly deposit of your choice in a separate debt settlement account. As soon as enough money is deposited the negotiation firm starts negotiating with the creditor. When an agreement is finalized, the money is transferred to the creditor’s account. This makes you free of debt very easy and very fast.

Special Delivery – Giving Talks, Presentations And Speeches With Awesome Delivery – Part 1 Of 2

It can be so frustrating. You hear a comedian tell the absolute funniest joke in the world. It’s so funny that you’re on the floor for ten minutes, shrieking hysterically. The next day you tell the same joke to your friends and their reactions are, to say the least, more subdued.

Now you’re devastated. “Don’t you get it?” you ask. They tell you they did get it, but it just wasn’t all that funny. “I guess you had to be there,” you mutter.

You know, often it’s not so much the joke itself that puts you on the floor, but the way it’s told. Comedians are masters of expression, voice-tone, timing, and all the subliminal little things they do that makes their renditions sparkle. Without these, yours will most likely fall flat.

It’s the same with any form of public speaking. It’s not just the words you say, but how you say them and how you send them to your listeners.

In short, it’s all in your delivery.

Delivery is everything in a talk or presentation. Okay, maybe not everything. Of course its content matters greatly as well.

But … if you want to really WOW your audience, keep in mind that your content – your words – need to impact the listener.

Now, the word, “impact” may seem to suggest a ranting and raving not unlike a pep rally or a political speech a-la Martin Luther King, Jr. Yes, certain talks call for this sort of highly-charged, impassioned delivery. But even if your talk is of the lower-key sort – a business meeting or a class, for instance – you certainly don’t want to bore your listener.

Great delivery is, above all, a matter of:

1. Intensity

2. Expression

Today we’ll cover intensity. By this I mean, first of all, to speak intensely. Keep your voice strong and clear. Speak up! Don’t say you can’t. Of course you can! What would you do if your child just doused the cat with half a bottle of your $60 cologne? Mumble? Whisper? I don’t think so. No, you would use those lungs of yours! Do the same in your talks. Push, push, push! Belt those words out! Listeners love it.

Second, speak as if you are very interested in your subject. It would help if you could find your way toward becoming very interested in it. But even if you can’t … fake it! Like the saying goes, “fake it ’til you feel it!”

A good speaker can get an audience fired up about nearly anything. Even the most mundane subjects can, if delivered with intensity, come alive. Think of the announcer on a commercial for a “New!” tortilla chip. How does he talk? Pretty intensely, right? We’re talking about a bag of salty, greasy fried corn here. But the way this person is speaking, you’d think they’d found a cure for cancer.

So I don’t care if you’re presenting a quarterly sales report, or giving a lecture on upholstery repair. Present that information with as much intensity as you possibly can! Make the subject interesting. Make the content stick in the listener’s mind. Make an impact upon your listener. Make them glad they came.
Conjure up as much infectious enthusiasm for your subject as you possibly can. And let it show on your face.

In fact, exaggerate. By that I mean, whatever mood you’re trying to express, exaggerate it. Don’t just sound interested, sound very interested. Don’t just sound encouraging, sound very encouraging.

You see, more often than not, the intensity with which we speak arrives at the listener in a weakened state. I don’t mean just the volume. It’s as if traveling through twenty-five feet of airspace simply dilutes half the energy right out of it. So, to compensate: Put more intensity, interest, and energy than you think you need.

Don’t worry that you might go too far with this. I’ve never seen a speaker who I thought was too “into it” – with the exception of a few over-the-top politicians, perhaps. More often than not, the opposite is true.

Ask yourself: How many speakers have I heard who were too excited? Or who made me feel too excited? Then ask: How many speakers have I heard who weren’t interesting enough? (i.e., bo-o-ring!)

To be interesting, be interested!

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In Part Two of “Special Delivery” we’ll look at the truly fun component of great delivery: Expression. Until then, I wish you the best with your public speaking endeavors!