Nutritious food is in such short supply in U.S. prisons that ramen noodles have actually overtaken tobacco as the dominant currency among inmates, The Guardian reports. "[Money] doesn't change unless there's some drastic change to the value in people using it," researcher and doctoral student Michael Gibson-Light said, concluding that the shift to ramen noodle trading indicates severe nutritional deficiencies in prisons.
Inmates in the U.S. typically receive two hot meals a day with one cold lunch and only two meals on weekends; oftentimes the food offered by the institution is of very low quality and does not offer the calories necessary to give inmates the energy to get through the day. As a result, ramen noodles have an outsized value among inmates, Gibson-Light found:
At the prison from the study, ramen cost 59 cents at the commissary but would be exchanged for items worth more in value. For instance, a sweatshirt — worth $10.81 — can be bought for two packs of ramen. Five tailor-made cigarettes — worth $2.00 — can be bought for one pack of ramen. Acquiring fresh vegetables to cook with was extremely highly regarded, Gibson-Light said. Inmates would use ramen to buy onions or zucchinis stolen from the kitchen.Others cleaned inmates' bunks for one pack of ramen — referred to as soup — a week, or did laundry or gambled with it. [The Guardian]
"I've seen fights over ramen. People get killed over soup," one inmate told Gibson-Light.
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