A women’s prison in the UK saw a spike in violence at the same time tofu was taken off the menu.
HMP Eastwood Park in Gloucestershire saw an ‘increase’ in assaults on staff, fights and bullying after the prison stopped serving tofu.
According to an official report, the increase was blamed on factors including ‘unmet specialist dietary needs’.
Tofu is a staple ingredient for as it is by extracting soy milk from soybeans, then coagulating the soy milk form curds, which are then pressed into blocks.
It has been removed from the prison menu as governors were struggling to provide three meals for a daily budget of £3 per head.
While it was unavailable, the prison – home to 440 women – started to garner a ‘resentful atmosphere’.
A number of inmates have since requested tofu be brought back at food consultation meetings with prison bosses.
However, the Independent Monitoring Board report said that it was a ‘challenge’ for the prison to dish up ‘a nutritious and health diet’ for just £3.01 per day.
Around 40 per cent of prisoners said they felt like they didn’t get enough to eat and that most food wasn’t ‘healthy’.
The report, seen by the Mirror, added that some has also issued written complaints about the food available.
It stated: ‘Issues ranged from concerns about the quality of meals and unmet specialist dietary needs. Some requested foods, such as tofu, were unavailable.’
Other reasons given for a rise in violence included time out of cell, the amount of time inmates were able to use the gym, lost property and access to doctors and dentists.
Staff were said to be left ‘stretched and exhausted, resulting in low morale’, according to the report, which also revelated that there had been a doubling of staff using force on inmates in the past year – from 517 to 1,039.
The report added: ‘The prison was very aware of the need to reduce use of force incidents (UoF) incidents, and allocated significant resources to determining the cause, staff training and changing the culture. Eastwood Park continued to have some of the highest UoF numbers in the women’s estate.’