By Joey Hadden
Jake Angeli, a far-right conspiracy theorist known as the ‘Q Shaman, hasn’t eaten in a week and has lost 20 pounds in a jail in Washington, DC, because he’ll eat only organic food, his lawyer says.
After storming the Capitol on January 6, Angeli was charged with disorderly conduct, violent entry, and illegally being in the Capitol, the Department of Justice announced on January 9.
Angeli refused the food provided to him in detention because of his “extremely restrictive diet.”
Angeli will receive food “in line with a shaman’s strict organic diet,” David Gonzales, US Marshal for the District of Arizona, told ABC15.
Later in January Angeli was transferred to a jail in Washington, DC, where his request for organic food was initially denied, as Insider reported.
Angeli’s lawyer said in a court filing that he had lost 20 pounds in a week because he refuses to eat inorganic food.
Judge Royce C. Lamberth ordered the jail to give Angeli organic food, Insider reported on February 3.
It’s unlikely, however, that the majority of US prisoners eat as well. Correctional facilities tend to emphasize saving money on food, and organic food is expensive. So inmates probably aren’t served too many organic meals.
And he’s not the first person behind bars to refuse to eat the notoriously awful food options in US jails and prisons. In fact, meals are notoriously awful in US jails and prisons.
Since the US has local, state, and federally-run jails and prisons, an inmate’s plate varies depending on where they are in the country, 9 News reported.
Cereal, fruit, bread, and sugar packets were on the breakfast menu for US inmates in 2020, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
For lunch in US prisons, bread, a fruit, a vegetable, and some kind of protein, like beans, are standard.
Some US prisons spend less than $1 on each inmate’s meal, The Marshall Project, a nonprofit publication that covers the US criminal justice system, reported in 2015.
Some inmates are so repulsed by certain meals that they skip them.
Barbara, an inmate from A&E’s documentary series “60 Days In,” previously told Insider that the beans in jail were so “inedible” that she frequently skipped dinner and didn’t eat until breakfast the next day.
Another inmate on the show, Tami, called the prison meals “depressing.”
But prison food doesn’t just taste bad — reports indicate that it’s also making some inmates sick.
A CDC study found that between 1998 and 2014, inmates suffered from a food-related illness 6.4 times more than the general population.
The nutraloaf is a punishment meal given to some US inmates because it’s so disgusting. The brick-like meal, pictured below, is typically made from tomato paste, potato flakes, and beans, Business Insider previously reported.
While it has been banned in a handful of states, WUFT and Fox12 Oregon have reported as recently as 2017 that the horrible food is still being served in some states, like Florida and Oregon.
Inmates at some US prisons have gone on hunger strikes to protest horrid conditions including the terrible food, according to The Guardian.
While prison meals in the US might look like the worst school lunch you’ve ever had, other countries have it much better.
One prison in Italy has a bakery inside of it where inmates make desserts like Panettone — a traditional Italian Christmas cake, Reuters reported in 2014.
A 2015 New York Times opinion piece reported that inmates in Germany had access to kitchens and were able to purchase fresh food with wages from vocational programs.
In “Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World,” Baz Dreisinger reports that a prison in Norway has its own nature reserve that grows 25% of the prison’s food.
We don’t know what Angeli’s organic meals in detention look like, but we doubt he’s eating Nutraloaves.
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