The Marshall Project

I Lost 25 Pounds in 4 Months Eating Prison Food

“I couldn’t wait to go home, restart my life—and eat a diet that didn’t kill me.”

I was born in 1965, the fourth child of six in a blue-collar Italian neighborhood where everybody knew everybody and a lot of pizza and pasta were consumed. By the time I was 3, I’d started vomiting and having diarrhea after every single meal.

After much testing and a hospital stay, a doctor in Little Falls, New York, determined that I had celiac disease, now infamously common among millennials, and he instructed my mother how to provide me a wheat-free, gluten-free diet.

Life Inside Perspectives from those who work and live in the criminal justice system. Related Stories

Fast forward several decades and as a middle-aged

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Marshall Project

The Marshall Project6 min readPsychology
Prison Is Even Worse When You Have a Disability Like Autism
State officials often fail to identify prisoners with developmental disorders, a group that faces overwhelming challenges behind bars, from bright lights to noises to social dynamics.
The Marshall Project2 min readCrime & Violence
Subjects To Debate
News Inside knows that political debates are always taking place behind the wall, even after the presidential election. That’s why Issue 6 is full of information that will help folks inside strengt...
The Marshall Project5 min readAmerican Government
Biden Will Try to Unmake Trump's Immigration Agenda. It Won't Be Easy
In one beating, the woman from El Salvador told the immigration judge, her boyfriend’s punches disfigured her jaw and knocked out two front teeth. After raping her, he forced her to have his name tattooed in jagged letters on her back, boasting that

Related Books & Audiobooks