I am currently an inmate in Santa Rita Jail (SRJ), the County Jail for Alameda County, housed in Housing Unit (HU) 2, Pod B. Every day, I write down on a log the food I receive. I compare the food I actually receive with the menus that Aramark issued. I asked the jail multiple times and even submitted grievances asking if they could provide me with a copy of my religious menu (I am currently receiving the Kosher diet here). They have constantly denied this request. I have only been able to compare the food I receive to the listed menu items after receiving these Aramark menus from my attorney. Attached as Exhibit A is a copy of the Aramark kosher diet menu.
I asked the jail multiple times and even submitted grievances asking if they could provide me with a copy of my religious menu (I am currently receiving the Kosher diet here). They have constantly denied this request.
After analyzing the amount of food I actually receive compared to the menu amounts, I have found that it is rare for me to receive what the printed menu says is supposed to be in the Kosher diet. It is rare for me to receive all the foods that the menu says I should be receiving and that these foods are in the stated quantities. For example, I’d say around a quarter to a third of the time, my breakfasts and dinners (the two meals that come on trays) have tray compartments that are only half or two thirds full (sometimes even less). Even though the meals are supposed to consist of two trays, one hot and one cold, there have been days where the kitchen fits everything on one tray, and I only receive one tray. When they do this for the breakfasts, they usually put the dry cereal, which is supposed to fill up the 1.5 cup large section, into the small sections (each around ¾ cup), and then the kitchen only fills up the small sections around 1/3 of the way with dry cereal. So, instead of receiving 1.5 cups of dry cereal, I end up with only 1 cups of dry cereal for breakfast.
For breakfast, I usually receive dry cereal (which again, is often short of the 1.5 cup the menu says I am entitled to), peanut butter or one hard-boiled egg, two pieces of bread, and jelly. I also usually receive two small milk cartons (one pint total). Peanut butter is part of my breakfast approximately three times a week. And around half the time, my breakfast tray is missing one (or sometimes both) of the peanut butter packets that the menu says I am entitled to. Each peanut butter packet is one ounce and contains approximately 7 grams of protein, so out of 7 days a week, I usually only get half my protein for breakfast a quarter of the time. These small packets of peanut butter (and on other days, the small hard-boiled egg) is my only source of protein for breakfast. This lack of protein in my breakfast (and general shortage of food) has a direct and significant impact on my health and energy level, and leaves me still feeling hungry even after eating everything on my tray.
However, the deputy on duty will sometimes say things like, “We don’t have any control over what Aramark puts on the trays.” Or, the deputy will say, “Well, it’s free food” and make no effort to track down enough food for me to receive a full breakfast. It is usually the overnight deputies who are on duty until seven in the morning that give me a “smart” answer and/or don’t help me complete my meal.
I always tell a deputy when my tray is missing a peanut butter, and sometimes the deputy will try to track down an extra packet for me. However, the deputy on duty will sometimes say things like, “We don’t have any control over what Aramark puts on the trays.” Or, the deputy will say, “Well, it’s free food” and make no effort to track down enough food for me to receive a full breakfast. It is usually the overnight deputies who are on duty until seven in the morning that give me a “smart” answer and/or don’t help me complete my meal.
As evidence of more breakfast shortages, I recall a period of over a week in August where we only received a half a pint of milk every day for breakfast instead of the full pint that the menu says we are entitled to. This is detailed in my food logs. I also never receive fruit in my breakfast, despite the menu saying we are entitled to a piece of fruit or a half cup equivalent for every breakfast. A handful of times, I have received an extra piece of fruit in my lunch to make up for the missing breakfast fruit, but this rarely happens.
As for shortages in my lunch, in 100% of my lunches over the time period I logged (between June 17, 2020 and October 24, 2020), I received four small cookies instead of the five that the menu promises. For me, I need all the calories I can get, so missing seven cookies a week that I should be getting makes a big difference.
To make matters worse, the dinners usually end up being very overcooked so that the beans become a mush. The rice we sometimes get instead of the beans is so dry and hardened to the point where I often can’t even chew it. Two to three times a week, I receive a tray with the plastic seal slightly off or opened. When I receive trays where the plastic seal has been damaged, the food overcooks and hardens even more than usual.
Shortages in my dinners are also constant. As I mentioned, tray compartments are often not full. Just the other night, I was able to pour all my beans (which are supposed to be 1.5 cups in volume and take up the whole large tray compartment) into the small compartment of my tray (the ¾ cup compartment) – all the beans easily all fit into that small compartment. Therefore, I only received half of the beans I was entitled to that night, confirmed by the tray’s own measurement system. To make matters worse, the dinners usually end up being very overcooked so that the beans become a mush. The rice we sometimes get instead of the beans is so dry and hardened to the point where I often can’t even chew it. Two to three times a week, I receive a tray with the plastic seal slightly off or opened. When I receive trays where the plastic seal has been damaged, the food overcooks and hardens even more than usual.
The vegetable portion for dinner is supposed to be one cup, but the amount that comes on the tray is often less. And the vegetables these days are usually just shredded cabbage in water. I don’t know why the cabbage is in water. If it’s supposed to be dressing, it has no flavor. And when the vegetables are spoiled and sour or brown, I have to throw it all out. I would estimate that the coleslaw or lettuce are spoiled and/or rotten around 20% of the time. I have noticed that while the hot trays are warming in the ovens, staff will often take the cold trays out of the fridge and lay them out on the tables, to be left there for two to three hours before being served. I have noticed that when the cold trays are sitting out for several hours, the vegetables are spoilt and are then inedible.
On October 16th, I started keeping a log of how long the dinner cold trays were left out at room temperature. Nine out of nine times I tracked this (100% of the time), the cold trays were left out for over two hours. On October 17th, I noted that the cold trays were left out from 1:30pm until dinner at 6:15pm (almost five hours). And on October 23rd, the cold trays were left out from 1:30pm until dinner at 5:15pm (almost four hours). Considering that the fruit in my breakfast is always missing and the vegetable portion of my dinner is rotten and inedible once a week at the very least, I believe I am experiencing a serious deficiency of fruits and vegetables in this jail.
And when the vegetables are spoiled and sour or brown, I have to throw it all out. I would estimate that the coleslaw or lettuce are spoiled and/or rotten around 20% of the time. I have noticed that while the hot trays are warming in the ovens, staff will often take the cold trays out of the fridge and lay them out on the tables, to be left there for two to three hours before being served. I have noticed that when the cold trays are sitting out for several hours, the vegetables are spoiled and are then inedible.
The “meat” element in my dinner is almost always TVP (textured vegetable protein), which tastes like cut up pieces of a kitchen sponge. Aside from the TVP being incredibly unappetizing, the TVP is another dinner element at least once a week (often twice or three times), contains less than the ¾ that the menu promises.
I don’t have the money for commissary, so I always make an effort to try and eat what I can of the jail meals. For example, the sauce that sometimes comes with the TVP is not only very unappetizing, but is usually very dried out. When this sauce is red, I am usually able to make it more fluid by diluting it with four or five ounces of water. However, the white sauce cooks so strangely that it leaves about a quarter to half an inch of a strange gelatin substance at the bottom of the tray section. Even when I try to dilute this white sauce with water to make it into a more uniform consistency, it doesn’t work. I can even pick up the layer of gelatin with my fork and it all stays together, like a big piece of rubber. This rubber layer is hard to chew, and so I can’t eat it. But it also fills up another quarter to half inch of the main food section, which creates an even bigger portion shortage in my dinners.
Even when I try to dilute this white sauce with water to make it into a more uniform consistency, it doesn’t work. I can even pick up the layer of gelatin with my fork and it all stays together, like a big piece of rubber. This rubber layer is hard to chew, and so I can’t eat it. But it also fills up another quarter to half inch of the main food section, which creates an even bigger portion shortage in my dinners.
When we used to receive the hard plastic reusable food trays, most of the time, if you looked, you would see food dried on the bottom and sides of the trays from the night before. If you didn’t look, you might bite into something very strange, like something hard or acidic. The dirty trays are disgusting, but they also result in the food being inedible. There apparently is no rinsing or drying of the trays. These trays have arrived in which the dry cereal is soggy, the bread is soggy, the Kool Aid packet is wet, making all of those items inedible. The corn tortillas often taste like soap, the flavor of unrinsed, soapy, wet trays.
Now though, my unit mostly receives disposable paper trays. On the one hand, the disposable trays are cleaner because they don’t have leftover food bits from the previous meals. On the other hand, I have measured the height and diameter of these paper trays compared to the plastic ones, and the paper trays have significantly smaller tray cups and hold less than the plastic trays, so I get less food. Attached as Exhibit B is a true and correct drawing I made of the tray to show the Court what they look like. These drawings are as close to scale as I could make them. I created them by tracing the bottoms of each type of food tray and then inserting the measurements I took of each compartment.
I arrived at this jail weighing 225 pounds in March 2018. I then gained weight after a few months in the jail, and I remember the psychiatrist documenting my weight at 248 pounds at one point. Around January or February of 2020, when Aramark started changing the menu, reducing the food portions more, and leaving out more of the meal elements, and I started losing weight. I have lost almost 70 pounds between January and August 2020 (eight months). In August 2020, I weighed 180 pounds, which I haven’t weighed since I was 16 years old. I am 6’2”, and even when I was running 1000 miles a year as an adult (I was in a club that did this every year), I weighed 205 pounds minimum. So in August, I went to see the jail doctor, and they put me on Ensure to gain some weight back. They gave me the Ensure carton to drink once a day, but I wasn’t gaining any weight, so they bumped me up to Ensure twice a day. At that point, I started gaining some weight back and ended up at 190 pounds. I was hoping to continue this regimen to get back to over 200 pounds, but then the doctors took me off Ensure, telling me I was at a healthy enough weight. I certainly didn’t feel healthy, but I wasn’t allowed to continue with the regimen. Now though, I can feel myself losing weight again.
Around January or February of 2020, when Aramark started changing the menu, reducing the food portions more, and leaving out more of the meal elements, and I started losing weight. I have lost almost 70 pounds between January and August 2020 (eight months). In August 2020, I weighed 180 pounds, which I haven’t weighed since I was 16 years old.
I have gotten food poisoning twice at SRJ. The first time, I thought the tuna in my lunch tasted very strange. Shortly after that, I felt ill and nauseous, and I started to profusely vomit shortly after. The second incident occurred on September 19, 2020 and is detailed in my food log. On that day, I thought the egg at breakfast tasted strange. Sure enough, my stomach started gurgling shortly after and I started to feel ill and then started repeatedly vomiting. I was throwing up from 8pm until 11pm and couldn’t even keep water down until the next morning. The nurse gave me Gatorade to rehydrate after that incident.
Not just the constant shortages, but also the frequent oversights (like getting mustard packets instead of jelly with the peanut butter in my lunch or the jail not providing my religious diet lunches when we go to court) are exhausting and drain my energy even more when I have to fight to get the meals I am entitled to. And usually, no one will listen. The food has definitely gotten worse and worse here as time has gone on. And it’s much worse than the food I received in prison.
I have very little energy in this jail due to the lack of nutrition I receive. I am always still hungry after meals. There’s nothing worse than starting the day hungry. See, if you start the day being hungry even after eating, the whole day you’re hungry, trying to catch up and being pissed off. Not just the constant shortages, but also the frequent oversights (like getting mustard packets instead of jelly with the peanut butter in my lunch or the jail not providing my religious diet lunches when we go to court) are exhausting and drain my energy even more when I have to fight to get the meals I am entitled to. And usually, no one will listen. The food has definitely gotten worse and worse here as time has gone on. And it’s much worse than the food I received in prison. I can barely ever afford to buy the very expensive commissary food items here at Santa Rita. I am only able to go around once every three months to grab a few things from commissary. I would say only 35-40% of prisoners have funds to get commissary food regularly, so most folks go hungry.