Nutraloaf includes bread, cheese, carrots, spinach, raisins, beans, oil, tomato paste and potato flakes. (Andy Duback, The Associated Press )

Vermont judges to rule: Is "nutraloaf" food or punishment?

By Wilson Ring
The Associated Press

MONTPELIER, Vt.; When shooting suspect Christopher Williams acted up in prison, he was given nutraloaf ? a mixture of cubed whole wheat bread, nondairy cheese, raw carrots, spinach, seedless raisins, beans, vegetable oil, tomato paste, powdered milk and dehydrated potato flakes.

Prison officials call it a complete meal. Inmates say it's so awful they would rather go hungry.

On Monday, the Vermont Supreme Court will hear arguments in a class-action lawsuit brought by inmates who say that it is not food but punishment and that anyone subjected to it should get a formal disciplinary process first.

Prison officials see nutraloaf as a tool for behavior modification.

"It tends to have the desired outcome," said Vermont Corrections Commissioner Rob Hofmann. "Once the offender relents, we stop with the nutraloaf. That's our goal, to protect our staff and not have them subjected to behavior that the average Vermonter would find incomprehensible."

Nutraloaf and its equivalents have been used for decades in prisons across the country. In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a concoction used in Arkansas known as "grue" "might be tolerable for a few days and intolerably cruel for weeks or months."

A federal judge ruled in 1988 that the use of nutraloaf by the Michigan Department of Corrections was punishment.