WASHINGTON – Often times a balanced diet ends up costing more than cheap, on-the-go foods. In Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, meals, which contains meats that are Muslim-approved, cost more than $12 per day.
While Gitmo is a Department of Defense facility, the Department of Justice runs the federal Bureau of Prisons. There, it costs about $3 per day to feed each of the 185,000 federal prisoners. Dietitians plan the meals to make sure prisoners get around 2,500-2,700 calories per day —same as the detainees in Guantanamo — but special meals are a lot harder to find.
In either case, taxpayers are picking up the fees.
Click in the video box to hear Sharon and Shana discuss how quality of food is affected by its expense.
Though it has not been cheap for us to eat each day, at least we have the benefit of picking up fresh fruits and vegetables. Buying fresh poultry and meat allows us the option of freezing.
But that's not so for all our diet, which does consist of some specifically designated canned products — like pineapple, which was served during Wednesday's lunch. Granted pineapples aren't the easiest fruits to cut, but they beat the cut-up stuff sitting in syrup.
Sharon was just fortunate enough to find fresh okra, not from the frozen or canned section of the supermarket. It makes all the difference.
Click here to read the menu for the two-week diet.
Some state and federal facilities still allow farming, but no offense to them or any farmers, it doesn't matter how fresh blackeyed peas are — and it's usually not very — they just aren't good.
Shana Pearlman is a producer for FOX News Radio's Tony Snow Show and can be reached at shana.pearlman@foxnews.com. Sharon Kehnemui Liss is the politics editor for FOXNews.com and can be reached at sharon.liss@foxnews.com.
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