Death Kava by Waldo Cheerio
March 27th, 2009 10:55 AMWhat is Nutraloaf?
Play me:
......Imagine, for a moment, you have been convicted of a significant crime and sentenced to prison. As a prisoner, you have a 45 to 64 percent chance of showing signs of a serious mental illness. There is also a good chance that this is not your first time behind bars. Your cell may even feel like home to you.
......You may have difficulty behaving and obeying the prison’s rules. You would not be the only one. If you act out once, you might lose your recreational privileges. Act out again and your keepers may put you in solitary confinement. A prison may have quite a long list of little luxuries it can take away from you. But what can a prison do when it has taken away everything that can be taken away from you, save for the necessities, and you still misbehave? If you are unlucky enough to be confined in certain jurisdictions, you just might have a date with the dreaded loaf.
......Nutraloaf, also known variously as “confinement loaf,” “meal loaf,” “prison loaf,” “special management meal,” “Nutri-loaf”, or simply “the loaf,” is a food served in some prisons. According to some critics it is literally a recipe for punishment.Prisoners have compared it to dog food and have claimed it to be inedible. It has been the subject of lawsuits in Illinois, Maryland, Nebraska, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, West Virginia, and Vermont. It has also been served in California, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, and Texas.
......Around the country, Nutraloaf is the subject of prisoners’ lawsuits with “some regularity.” The arguments usually focus on the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, or the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments’ due-process implication that the employment of Nutraloaf should be accompanied by some sort of hearings.
......Nutraloaf has been called an effective tool for behavior management, and it has been called the twenty-first century version of bread and water. A human can survive with it – but can the Constitution?
Why I Did It
......There really aren't any foods that scare me and still qualify as food. I have an irrational fear of spiders, for instance, but only ones that are alive, and I don't recommend eating those. I am happy to try anything once, even the much dreaded casu marzu would be a must-have if I found myself in Sardinia. I love food, I eat with abandon and delight every day. I worked out that I was a supertaster as an undergraduate, and have voluntarily taken up the mantle of trying new and exciting foods whenever possible. As it happens I've got a lifelong quest to eat as many different animals as I can, with moral reservations only for the endangered. If I got the chance to eat whale, dolphin, or even chimpanzee I'm not sure I would turn it down on moral grounds, although I could hardly encourage the hunt. So where would I ever find a food that scared me?
......Just when I thought I would never find a food I simply would not eat, a phrase caught my ear. I overheard that there was a food being challenged in the Supreme Court of the United States as "cruel and unusual punishment." On that basis alone I knew I had to test my palate against a food condemned (perhaps) by the Constitution itself!
How I Did It
......It just so happens that I know someone writing an article discussing the oft-challenged constitutionality of this foodstuff known as Nutraloaf.
That quote you just read was from their latest draft. I got in touch with them and decided that for the sake of scholarship and science he would prepare as many official state penitentiary recipes as were available for this meal, and I would eat them. ......Moreover, while he was only trying them to comment on their flavor, I was willing to take on the real challenge -- eating ONLY nutraloaf.
A Prisoner's Dilemma: To Eat or Not to Eat
The basic legal challenge against this food is that prisoners on a Nutraloaf diet are fed the exact same meal, at room temperature, to be eaten with their bare hands, three meals a day, every day. Many prisoners will simply start skipping meals because they can't bear the monotony. It is no individual square of the loaf that is cruel, it is the loaf to the exclusion of all else. This, I found, is what scares me.
I looked at my life, and I realized that good food is about the only luxury I enjoy. While working on The Taking Tree, where all of LA0 was called upon to put what they treasured into trees, I realized I don't have any possessions I treasure anymore. I own clothes, books, a mattress, and food. But oh, what food I enjoy. So leading up to the nutraloaf diet, I documented my meals to show you just how luxuriously I eat on my student meal plan, and more importantly how accustomed to variety I have become.
Rosemary potato wedges, beef stroganoff, basmati rice, walnut and cherry salad with red wine vinaigrette. Oh, and a white-sauce fried fillet of catfish in the back there.
A grilled cheese sandwich. There is a story about this sandwich, go through the proof files to see it.
A carrot cake with walnuts and raspberry sauce.
A fresh fruit salad of pineapple, honeydew melon, grapes, watermelon, and canteloupe, in strawberry yogurt, topped with granola.
Chicken Penne Marinara with cilantro and Gorgonzola, accompanied by "Dynamite" pizza, featuring an unusually peppered garlic-tomato topping.
All of that is a single dinner for me, typically. There is some repetition in that I will always have chicken or beef, some fish, some pizza and pasta, some salad, and some pie or cake. But it is different every night, and there are a dozen chefs at work making the components of a single meal. No one cooks for themselves like this.
So now to the problem. I believed I was dependent on this variety.
But was I so dependent I would come to fear this in its place?
What I Did
With five recipes in hand, representative of those used in twelve states, we got to work. 
Ryan diced, molded, and blended recipes defined by state statute. Impressively, California actually defines the exact cooking procedure for their recipe in the California Penal Code!
I prepared to consume these dishes with nothing but a paper towel, and my mitts. Most of the dishes were prepared in advance because they needed to be back down to room temperature before we could eat them as prisoners would.So now for the eating. A full documentation of each recipe is in the photos section at the end of the praxis, where you can read my discussion of each meal. Mostly though, it went like this:
Illinois "Vegan Meal Loaf"
At the end of the day, I went home with many duplicates of each of these four bricks'o'food:
And that is all I ate.
For days. No exceptions. I went out with a group of friends to see The Watchmen, and afterwards they stopped at an IHOP. I brought in my tray of goodies, passed them around, and was rather resoundly rejected. I can't blame them, who would eat that willingly?
How could I compete? IHOP serves you food that smiles.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Mine doesn't smile.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I sat at the next table, and quietly ate.
I stayed with The Walrus the next day. For breakfast: Nutraloaf.
For lunch: Nutraloaf
For dinner: Everyone had Ribs!
.
.
.
.
.
.
I reached for a Nutraloaf.
Oh, and did I mention that during this whole ordeal I had tonsilitis? Yeah, that made it literally painful to swallow. I don't know how that fits into the broader scheme of the task, but it happened. Look, look at my tonsils (and also how disgusting this food was).
It got to the point where I was contemplating each bite with existential woes and nihilistic internal struggles.
I'm not kidding. There were times when all the pleasure and wonder of the world around me was forgotten. When I ate, there only was Nutraloaf in my future.
.
.
.
.
The Walrus even lovingly crafted for me a desert that would fit into my diet; an eggless pear-bread of her own design.
I would like to think it is because she could not bear to see me suffer so that she deigned to offer me what pleasure this cruel regimen demanded of me, but it may have been either because she found it funny to bring me food in loaf form or because this is all she had worked out how to bake. I would've killed for a chocolate chip cookie though.Eventually though, it was over. Here is how I felt about that.
Finally, if you would like to read the article derived from this madness, I have appended a Word Document with the relevant names redacted to protect their identities. I also wanted to get into some of the theories of criminal justice, and whether prison meets them at all, but I decided it doesn't belong in this praxis about my experiment with the food. If you do want to read another article that articulates what my best informed opinion on the US prison system amounts to, drop me a line and I'll send you a copy. The tl;dr version is that prison only prevents some types of crime, but increases others, and we pay for the inconsistent mess?
Update: I was a runner up in the Los Angeles Bizarre Foods Invitational based on my Death Kava experience. It looks like Los Angeles has a fair few other masochistic foodies out there. No direct connection with Mr. Garnett's intended "consume your fears" interpretation of the task, although snakes are pretty troubling.
Meet Nutraloaf
A human can survive with it – but can the Constitution?
First Dish at Dinner
Rosemary potato wedges, beef stroganoff, basmati rice, walnut and cherry salad with red wine vinaigrette. Oh, and a white-sauce fried fillet of catfish in the back there.
Second Dish
Basil Shrimp Penne Alfredo.
Getting the Third Dish
After I had eaten a grilled-cheese sandwich, I realized I had eaten it so voraciously that I forgot to take a picture. I went over to the serving station to take a picture of another one, and the Chef, seeing my camera, whisked it into the back to make it more presentable.
Posing with the Master at Work
The chef was so pleased someone appreciated his work, he asked to pose with the grilled cheese sandwich while a passerby took a photo of us. I wonder if he thought I was writing a review.
A Grilled Cheese Sandwich
To be fair, that is a delicious looking grilled cheese right there.
Third Dish
A carrot cake with walnuts and raspberry sauce.
Fourth dish
Lemon Meringue Pie
Fifth Dish
A fresh fruit salad of pineapple, honeydew melon, grapes, watermelon, and canteloupe, in strawberry yogurt, topped with granola.
Passionfruit Orange Juice
I went back to my parent's home over the weekend. For breakfast I ate out on our lawn, and found something serenely beautiful about my juice.
Egg Bagel with Butter and Current Jam
Also playing around with focus features on my camera, I was able to both focus close up on the bagel, and on a leaf on the lawn seen through the center.
Starter Salad
A steak ceasar salad and green beans casserole
Main Dish
This was a real treat. The night before they had served a barbecue beef dish; leftover bbq was served in grilled cheese sandwiches, and it was sinfully good. Also pictured: apricot glazed grilled chicken breast, sesame grilled string beans in soy sauce, garlic rice pilaf, and baked swordfish with wasabi mayonnaise.
Second Dish
Chicken Penne Marinara with cilantro and Gorgonzola, accompanied by "Dynamite" pizza, featuring an unusually peppered garlic-tomato topping.
Dinner Three
This time what began as an appetizer salad (with incongruous ham) snowballed into a dish of cranberry-olive breaded turkey breast, fillet of sole with chives, and a masterful grilled cheese sandwich.
Desert
Coconut Creme Pie
Desert Tea
Tazo's Earl Gray Tea with whole milk and brown sugar.
Continuing Dinner Three
After desert I still felt hungry, so I went back for some prime rib, sesame string beans, an olive-cranberry glazed chicken breast unlike the turkey from earlier, and long-grain farro (which was somewhere between quinoa and rice from past experience).
Earlier On
Also, it seemed worth mentioning the incredibly marvelous meal provided for me earlier this year by Peter Garnett on his birthday. Smoked turkey, pearl onions with beats, the lightest and richest yams I have ever tasted, and broccoli no carnivore could turn their nose up at. This was the meal that got me started learning to take photographs that better highlight the qualities of food.
Preparing Nutraloaf
Here Ryan, author of the article, gets his hands dirty with California Isolation Diet.
Beautiful Isolation Diet
This was the Maryland Special Management Meal. See the dark spots? Raisins. See the light spots? Kidney beans. Dear god, there are both of those in there?!
Finest Linens
Nutraloaf ostensibly exists because it can be served to prisoners without need for utensils. It is served on a single paper towel, or sheet of wax paper.
My Bear Hands! Yarr!
Taking a photograph of your own hands is tricky. Do it. I dare you.
Vegan Illinois
We left the trays to cool and dry under cereal boxes. This one was the vegan meal, and the first we tried.
Vegan Meal Loaf
Those don't look like unappetizing ingredients. It is the lack of instructions that is the problem. Food should not be prepared, generally, with just a combination of "combine" and "blend".
My Plate
What I would be eating off of during our test. Often I skipped this later in the week, preferring just my hands so I could eat on the go. Trust me, you don't want to savor this meal.
A sense of scale
I tried to take pictures so you could see what the portions were here. Each square would be half of a meal, so six of those a day is what prisoners would get.
You can never see the hat.
I go to a lot of trouble to wear my waldo hat at the least when I task, but in photos I take of myself you can almost never see it. Bah.
Close-up
Look at the fibers of veggies. Not entirely a paste, but pretty close to it otherwise.
Like Thanksgiving Stuffing on a Diet
I took notes on what I thought for Ryan to quote in his article. If you have trouble reading any of these, click "view file" so you can see my terrible handwriting full-size.
Meal Loaf
Oh wow, two whole ounces of ground beef? Huzzah!
Beef Meal Loaf
Somehow though this does look different that the meatless one. The cooking process was also different I guess.
A serving of beef?
These came out thinner, so an appropriately weighted square had to be bigger.
Illinois Beef Comments
I did wonder at how it felt moist, but left my mouth feeling dry. Very odd.
California Disciplinary Isolation Diet
Looks pretty good in the pan. Finally some appetizing colours at least.
Textured Vegetable Protein?
Impressive ingredient list, but still the instructions are to "shape into a loaf and bake." Hrm.
Recognizable at least
This did have recognizable constituent ingredients though. Look, beans!
Cat Attack
Ryan's roommate enjoyed hers so much she made a move to eat mine. I can't blame her, this one was great by comparison.
Behold it's greasy glory
That was food alright. I bet you'd eat that. Just looking at it makes me hungry. Freshness was key here, but they don't cook this stuff fresh every day for prisoners. That would be a waste of labor.
California Comments
"This under sour cream, guacamole, some cheese... you would be a superbowl host to much adulation." I'd love to see someone make the dish I suggested, that'd just make my day.
Maryland Monstrosity
This one was terrible. Words fail me now.
Great Northern Beans?
What the hell are Great Northern Beans and why are they touching my raisins?!
The whole thing.
Apparently this one is lower in calories than the other, so you have to eat more of it. God I hate Maryland. Have I mentioned that?
Maryland Comments
"Like lima beans and baked yams, except the beans taste a little fruity and the yams were strained through a sock." That whole quote ended up in the article. I am so proud of myself.
The Lineup
Here's most of what I had to eat all week. In duplicates of course, but that is a single serving of each. (The Washington/Oregon recipe was made several days later, and I only had it on my last two days when supplies of these were running low.)
The Walrus Doubts It
The Walrus did have a nibble, but IHOP was no place for my antics.
This Guy
He was the only one willing to try it. His displeasure was marked the same way I would imagine an austrian violin teacher would silently disgrace your off-key sonata after recital. We are trying to get him to be a player, we'll see.
Create-A-Face Pancake
Besides a resounding lack of bacon, that meal had everything Nutraloaf leaves you lacking. Happiness for one.
The closest to a smile...
This is as close to a smile as Nutraloaf ever offers.
Waldo at IHOP
Telling the waitress that I was not going to be ordering was very difficult. She could have brought me pancakes. With syrup!
Pear-Bread
Ah, TLC in a loaf. Thank you The Walrus. My reprieve was greatly enjoyed.
Breakfast
For breakfast I finished the leftovers from the IHOP nibblers.
I tried to look on the bright side...
In the morning light this had some advantages over cold cereal perhaps.
Then again...
Having to finish the Maryland monstrosity afterwards though when I found I was still hungry... that sucked. It just plain sucked.
The gloves were off, the hat was on.
I wasn't pulling any punches on this diet. The hat was on full-time.
Sweet Temptation
The Walrus had ribs.
Nutraloaf for Dinner
I had some nutraloaf. I think this part was what makes any diet suck.
A familiar sight
Eventually I saw nothing else.
Tonsilitis
I only noticed later that you could also see the red and swollen back of my throat in this picture, indicative of my wakes-me-up-at-night tonsilitis of the last two weeks. The diet just added insult to injury. Maybe call this one "Two Pains, One Mouth"?
Midnight Snack
I took to saving the California loaves for midnight snacks, as a sort of treat. I still hated it, as these got dryer and seemingly colder every day. Even I couldn't hold to true monotony in every meal by eating a quarter-serving of each.
Oregon's Solution
Here you see the meatloaf-quality loaf courtesy of Washington and Oregon state penitentiaries. We made this on day four of my diet. Juicy.
That looks like food!
This was delicious the first time. I was so impressed with the difference.
See; Impressedness!
This was a meal meant to be enjoyed. Given a choice, go to prison in Oregon man, trust me.
Big too
This was a hefty chunk of food too. More than enough meat, so you needed a large serving to cover the daily necessity of veggie goodness.
Sample
This was the stock image of nutraloaf left over as evidence from one of the proceedings. They made it look particularly heinous for the jury.
Mantra
Ryan's iTunes played this during our taste tests, and we reckoned it was the most appropriate thing we had heard for solitary confinement cuisine. Much better than the Chris Isaac stuff to set the mood anyway.
Ryan -- Nutraloaf Final Draft.doc
Here is the final version of his submitted article, with some names changed to protect identities. If you are interested in the hows and whys of Nutraloaf's existence, and the challenge to it, I find this to be a relatively amusing read.
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whywait, diet, nihilism, foodtask, law, food46 comment(s)
this, and loki's task from a few days ago are quickly turning this task into one of the best ever written.
at first I was afraid that an exoticist tendency would take over and people would just end up as food tourists, like that guy on the food network who gets paid to eat anything.
but you two are diving right into the heart of how the food-industry complex works in our everyday lives.
a toast to you both, and hopefully a piece of toast, or some other palate-cleansing food.
does this mean I shouldn't submit my giant-rat/snail-kebab eating experiences?
of course you should.
i mean, giant rat.
Wow, Waldo -that stuff was truly vile.
Also, I wish I had been able to document the time I ate fox ovaries for this task.
what? eww...
I was just thinking about this task, in that it says the food has to frighten you. This doesn't have to suggest that EATING the food should frighten you.
I'm just thinking that I should eat a dog.
> I was just thinking about this task, in that it says the food has to frighten you. This doesn't have to suggest that EATING the food should frighten you.
This is what I keep saying.
I completely forgot.
I meant to start off by saying that this task wasn't only about an act of eating that scares you, but about devouring your fears incarnate. I picked this as a manifestation of the penitentiary system which currently incarcerates or monitors 1/50 Americans, and which consumes the lives of the 1/30 involved in the enforcement, prosecution, or punishment of drug offenses. I fear the ignorance and cruelty possible under a system where no one is responsible, all suffer needlessly, and by the Prisoner's Dilemma everyone's best course of action is to grow and further the cycle.
I fear this because I am a part of it now.
Oh.
This is a joke people!
Please don't negative comment vote it.
Well, in that case I want my 5 points back.
If I could +5 this again without resorting to sockpuppet shenanigans, I would.
It's always a joy to see a completion which reaches far beyond the task.
It's interesting that boredom in food is so cumulatively unpleasant.
That "real" food (i.e. not nutraloaf) looked so good in the praxis, and made me hungry, but the tonsils and half-chewed... stuff (which reminded me far too much of a certain internet video) really neutralised any hunger pangs I may have had...
ever.
I wonder if any food eaten to such an absolute excess would produce similar results. But what could you eat for such a long period of time without significant nutrient detrminents in your diet? I suppose that's really where Nutraloaf comes in.
I doubt I could've handled it for very long.
I could have handled it for much much longer.
I've survived on nothing but uncooked ramen for months.
Food isn't a very important part of my life.
Do I have a new foe who's not revealing their identity?
I would love to have a real foe. My supposed foes are lame and don't actually do anything. I want a foe that will actively do some foeing.
I used to eat nothing but bread, chesse and water when traveling, maybe for solid blocks of 15 days or so. Well, fruit. Hmm, yeah, ok, not exactly the same predictable loaf day after day. But while on the island it was fish with tortillas and beans or fish with tortillas and no beans. I don´t remember it was a problem, though, although I do remember raiding one forgotten jar of strawberry jam found at the bottom of my backpack...
I don't know that it's the actual boredom of Nutraloaf which makes it so hard, but the fact that it is not at all an attractive thing to eat. I suspect it's something to do with the salt content.
I lived for four days once on crackers and Gatorade (also on an island), and it wasn't actually too bad. Salt content in crackers made them appetizing, and Gatorade (which I normally hate) got suddenly full of interesting nuances.
Man. Your supposed foes are lame.
Except for The Revolutionary. That was fun.
I know.
I want whoever is negative comment voting my mundane unoffensive comments to just go ahead and be-foe me and we can have ourselves a duel or something. And you're right, The Revolutionary WAS so fun.
To be fair, it was a rather obnoxious comment.
I didn't negative-vote it (nor any comments, as far as I can recall), but it isn't all that surprising that someone did.
Yeah, don't use up a glove slap on negative comment voting.
Well if you get befoed by somebody sufficiently awesome, then a negative comment vote here or there would be a fine excuse for such things. A reason, not so much, but really "Glove Slap is awesome" is reason enough in my book if you can find something to duel over.
Really I just want to use my Glove Slap and duel somebody, and I figure, like you say, that if somebody keeps negative comment voting me, then that's a good excuse. Well, as good an excuse as any.
And Loki, I don't think my comment was obnoxious at all. It was in response to DA, and it was honest.
So. Who wants to duel? Who's trying to pick a fight? Let's go. It's go time!
I'm not negative comment voting you.
Which means I have other, hidden motives for this.
*Glove slap.*
Ooh. A level zero duel.
This will be awesome.
I'll take that challenge, but if we're going to do a Level Zerø task (which I think is a great idea), there are a lot more tasks that could be much more fun to do and to read.
I suggested that specific task for similarly shadowy reasons to the original Glove Slap. However, as I'm the challenger, it's only fair that you get most of the choice over the weapons.
Thus, I'll revise my earlier decision. This one.
If you want to specify one, you can, but I won't. This is the kind of thing that oughtn't be rushed.
This really is fascinating. I think the contrast between Nutraloaf and your ordinary meals makes the best point.
Thinking back to my suffering, a lot of the minor insults of the meal are easily forgotten. The grimy film that coats your mouth after a meal, the clammy feel of it between your fingertips and on your lips, the unseasoned taste lacking any of the addictive driving flavors of fat or salt or sugar or cheese... it all seems unimportant compared to going so many days without a warm meal. Without even a meal that was dry enough to not sap warmth from my gums as I chewed would have been a relief.
I can recall being on diets of only cold food, or diets without variety, and even while sick being restricted to diets lacking solid foods. But all of them have justification; the excitement of a hike at the cost of meals, or knowing you will feel much less nauseous on soup than on pizza. But without ever working up an appetite, or doing so in exchange for benefits elsewhere, living on unremittingly cold food too insubstantial to require chewing is far worse than I ever would have imagined, just comparing the flavor of Nutraloaf to the flavor of my typical meal.
A shplank if ever I saw one.
Although I will personally give a supervote to anyone who eats casu marzu.
Dear lord, Man! Masochistic hardcore points will be duly awarded.
Andrew, you are one crazy fuck. I give you my last four vote points.
"As it happens I've got a lifelong quest to eat as many different animals as I can, with moral reservations only for the endangered."
Hee hee!! I'm glad some morals are still involved :-D
This completion was a great read! 5pts!
this is incredible. it's a humanitarian research effort and it explores psychological intricacies of one of the most intrinsic elements of survival. bluh. my wording does it no justice. you are brilliant, sir, and I like your taste in food.
I remember seeing this task (albeit a year ago - oops!) and it was very clear how !awesome! and involved it was however, I was in a rush out the door or had some other excuse to leave my computer with all the good intention of returning and reading this task in its full glorious detail and entirety ... and of course I unfortunately let it slip my mind!
so, Waldo, I come bearing gifts of belated points (and perhaps you'll garner a few more from others who found themselves in a similar predicament to mine) as well as the comment I would have surely posted at this time last year noting the parallels with The Monkey Chow Diaries. This guy ate only food pellets designed for monkeys and had similar (if at times, even more extreme) experiences. His videos were even seen by zookeepers who, after realizing the psychological effects of eating the same type of food ad infinitum, vowed to start varying their animals' diets ...
... what was the outcome of that Supreme Court case by the way?
grossness. thats way worse the hot dog smore i made
this is amazing. this praxis scares me in its intensity because I also feel that eating a variety of foods is really important to me, and I suspect that if I ate the same thing for even just a week - even something I liked - I'd go much crazier, much faster. how would I do in an environment where I had no food variety and yet needed to survive? I don't want to find out.
I find myself feeling relieved that I really can't justify doing this task, on the purely physical basis that too much of what I do requires me to eat nutritiously and copiously. if I couldn't force myself to eat enough of the same thing, I'd be putting myself in danger when I practiced my sport and other physical arts and I can't do that... so I'm safe from this task... for now.
fffffffffffffffffffff