Leslie Soble: Eating Behind Bars
Food with Mark Bittman
Sweetness and Light
4.9 • 947 Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2025
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Impact/Justice's Leslie Soble, an internationally recognized voice on the carceral eating experience, talks to Kate and Mark about what eating in prison is really like. The three discuss food as an active form of punishment, the deep connection between the critical problems of hunger and food waste, creative things incarcerated people do to stay nourished, and the good work that select organizations are doing to bring better food to prisons.
Read an excerpt from Leslie's book, Eating Behind Bars: Ending the Hidden Punishment of Food in Prison, on The Bittman Project: https://bittmanproject.com/eating-behind-bars/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to food. I'm Kate Bitman, and we are so glad that you're here with us. If you want more, |
| 0:08.1 | remember to check us out online at bitmanproject.com. We've got more than 1,500 recipes with new ones |
| 0:14.5 | added daily, plus some really wonderful food writing from some really wonderful food writers, |
| 0:20.4 | and recommendations for products and more. |
| 0:23.2 | Bitmanproject.com. And as always, email us with any questions or feedback at food at markbitman.com. I can't remember when it started, or specifically why, but over the last few years, I and Mark, although presumably it goes back further for him, |
| 0:55.5 | have become increasingly interested in the hows and what's of food in prison. |
| 1:00.3 | How it's served? What's served? Are their choices? Are their vegetables? Is there yogurt? Is |
| 1:05.0 | every food that's served ultra-processed? The questions don't end, which is why preparing for today's interview was so |
| 1:12.4 | tough. Where to begin, where to end? I just, I have a lot of questions. In 2020, Impact Justice |
| 1:18.8 | released the first ever national examination of food and prison, with her book, Eating Behind |
| 1:25.1 | Bars, Ending the Hidden Punishment of Food and Prison, Leslie Sobel, |
| 1:29.9 | in partnership with Impact Justice, digs deeper, and let me tell you, she answers a lot of questions. |
| 1:37.2 | Eating Behind Bars reveals a systemic drive to cut costs at the expense of health and decency. |
| 1:43.6 | No surprise there. But it's also a story of |
| 1:46.7 | resistance and hope showing how incarcerated people and their allies are fighting back. Of note, |
| 1:53.5 | this was Leslie's first time on a podcast. She started off by telling us how nervous she was, |
| 1:58.6 | and then she ended up being one of the most polished |
| 2:00.8 | people we've talked to in a good way. She obviously worked so incredibly hard on eating behind bars |
| 2:06.8 | and as a fountain of knowledge. I hope you find this conversation as fascinating, horrifying, |
| 2:12.6 | and hopeful as we did. One more thing. We have an excerpt from eating behind bars up on the Bitman Project. |
| 2:19.4 | The link to that is in today's show notes. |
| 2:23.2 | Leslie, thanks for joining us today. It's really nice to have you here. |
... |
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