It finally happened: Food from the dining hall made me physically ill. 

I have long thought I could eat anything, anywhere, and be fine. I can’t recall a time in my life when my stomach wasn’t as durable as a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet. But in prison, food poisoning seems inevitable: The food is bad, and the cooking and eating conditions are often unsanitary. 

A 2024 report from the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that incarcerated people are six times more likely to get food poisoning than the general public. It took me 11 years to suffer this fate. After interviewing some peers, I found that other people had also experienced food poisoning less frequently than stats indicate. Still, their experiences in prison with foodborne illness were memorable, even years later. 

After a long Labor Day weekend of bartering for rolls of toilet paper and cashing in social currency for even more toilet paper, I sought medical care. The nurse asked a few questions, had me lay down on the examination table and poked me in the abdomen. 

“You had food poisoning, and it was from the dining hall,” she said matter-of-factly. “Next time it happens, try a liquid diet for 24 hours; it’ll flush out the toxins. Here’s some Pepto-Bismol. Take one every 30 minutes for the next three hours.” 

The day I believe I was infected, lunch was “turkey E&P and rice.” The “E&P” is untold — it probably means “ends and pieces” — but is ripe for humorous conjecture. Dinner was a meal I had recently praised: scrambled egg and potato casserole. I didn’t want such a wonderful meal to be at fault.

My 11-year streak of food poisoning might seem impressive, but others have gone even longer.

Take Charlie Gibbs, a teaching assistant at Everglades Correctional Institution. He has been incarcerated for 23 years and has never suffered from food poisoning. He, however, is on the religious diet program, which includes food delivered in plastic bags, plastic cups and StarKist pouches, all provided in a paper bag. 

Gibbs’ meals are safer because he doesn’t eat from the same reusable plastic trays as 1,650 other men do three times a day.

Resident dishwashers sanitize the trays, sporks and cups, but confidence in the cleanliness of these items is depressingly low. 

Aaron Avis, a resident here, said there’s no way the trays are clean. “The dishwasher doesn’t get anywhere near the temperature it should nor is it cleaned as consistently as it should be,” he said.

Avis would know — he was part of the dorm program that deep-cleans the kitchen weekly. His job was to clean and perform light service on the dishwashers.

Corenzo Johnson, a resident and an educator at ECI, has had food poisoning at least three times in his 34 years of incarceration. 

“You don’t want to go through that experience,” he said. Each time, he surmised it was “some kind of salmonella contamination, probably from the kitchen. Either the food or the trays.”

He visited our medical staff but was dissatisfied with their response. “They examined me, and the only thing they gave me was some ibuprofen and told me to work through it,” Johnson said. 

Negative experiences with medical staff are a common problem for residents at any prison. Gervasio Torres Jr., who has been incarcerated for 18 years, had a slightly more positive report of a dorm-wide norovirus outbreak at Martin Correctional Institution. 

“I think the cause of it was a sanitary issue from the chow hall,” he said. “They brought medical in, quarantined the dorm and issued everyone one antibiotic pill.”

Torres paused while recounting his tale and shook his head. He said the sounds and smells really stuck with him. With the dorm quarantined, the residents of his wing were largely left alone with their misery and pain for days.

Martin Puccio, a student with Miami Dade College at ECI, has been incarcerated for 31 years and has only suffered food poisoning once, from a packet of mackerel he had bought from the canteen, or prison general store. 

“It was bad for a few days, but I never put in for sick call,” he said. “They wouldn’t have done anything, anyway.” 

Puccio attributed his overall luck in evading food poisoning to having skipped half the available meals since he’s been in prison.

I too have avoided as many dining hall meals as I can. I don’t go to breakfast, and have been skipping dinners nearly every weekend. I’ve not yet reached a 50% miss rate like Puccio, but I’m getting close. Perhaps that’s what has saved me for so long. Or it could be luck. 

Even though I have now gotten food poisoning, I don’t plan on changing my dining habits. I’m still going to eat off the chow hall trays, drink from their cups and use their utensils. 

What choice do I have? I can’t financially afford to eat every meal in the dorm from the canteen. Even if I could, it’s not healthy — there are no vegetables or fruits for sale there. 

I take a risk every time I raise a spork to my mouth, but that’s just how eating in the chow hall goes.