A Rotten Food Fight
Spoiled Oberlin kids don’t know what injustice is
SOME students at Oberlin College are upset that their school’s food isn’t culturally sensitive enough. In the Oberlin Review, a student from Vietnam complained that the banh mi sandwich served up wasn’t “a crispy baguette with grilled pork, pate, pickled vegetables and fresh herbs,” but instead a cruel Midwestern mishmash of “ciabatta bread, pulled pork and coleslaw.”
Talk about a slap in the face. “It was ridiculous,” the student was quoted as saying.
A junior from Japan complained that the rice in the sushi wasn’t cooked properly, and that this, combined with the “lack of fresh fish,” was completely “disrespectful.”
Perhaps the student was disrespectful of the fact that Oberlin is landlocked.
But here’s the deal: If these students are so attuned to the intersection of food and justice, perhaps there are other fights worth going to the (place)mat for. One that comes to mind is the food served to people in prison.
Just last week, as part of its overhaul of solitary confinement, New York state declared that it will no longer serve people in solitary a type of food called the “Nutraloaf ” or “Disciplinary Loaf,” which the prisoners call simply, “The Loaf.” It’s a brickshaped concoction of milk, flour, potatoes, carrots, margarine and sugar all baked into a chunk far less palatable than it may sound.
“They call it ‘food punishment,’ ” says Isaac Scott, program director for the Confined Arts project at Columbia University, who spent seven years and change in upstate prisons.
Oberlin students might be surprised to learn, as I was, that not only was the food in the chow hall unseasoned, there was no pepper on the table. It was removed for “security reasons” sometime around 2004. What’s more, inmates weren’t allowed to bring in any condiments they’d purchased at the commissary.
“I brought a little bottle of mayonnaise to dinner,” recalls Johnny Perez, now a safe reentry advocate at the Urban Justice Center in Manhattan, but formerly a prisoner for 13 years. He served some of his time at the Coxsackie Correction Facility upstate, and one day, he says, it was hamburger day there, “and I like a little mayo on my bun.”
Unfortunately for Perez, this was a day the guards elected to search the prisoners on their way into the dining hall, and they seized the contraband. When Perez argued that he wanted it back, “I was being ‘verbally noncompliant.’ I ‘threatened the safety and order of the facility,’ ” he recalls. For that, he lost a month of packagereceiving and phone privileges.
He couldn’t call his 8yearold daughter on her birthday, thanks to wanting mayo on his burger.
In the prisons he was in, says Scott, the inmates received an icecreamscoop portion of whatever food they were being served, and dinner was at 4:30 p.m. (Lunch was at about noon, breakfast at 6 or 7.) Nights were long and hungry.
For a breakfast treat, every other Thursday, the prisoners got scrambled eggs. Otherwise, it was Wheatena. Once a month they got a donut.
The prisoners had 10 minutes to eat. If they stood up without first asking permission, said Scott, “that could send you to the box.”
To solitary, that is. And The Loaf.
I asked Scott how outsiders — say, college students longing to make the world more decent, one meal at a time — could help.
“Get the facts and data about the actual meals [in prison]. The portions. Show how food is used as punishment. When you get sentenced to The Loaf, that’s injustice,” said Scott. “It’s indicative of the feeling, ‘You should be dead. We’re only feeding you because we have to.’ ”
But of course, prison is just one place students interested in food issues might want to start. Helping run a food bank is another. Or bringing the elderly to the grocery store. Or serving meals to the homeless.
Any of these activities beyond the campus should give the students a new world view — and an appetite. When they get back, chances are even ciabatta with pulled pork will look pretty good.
Especially if they’re allowed to put some pepper on it.