Why don't we do nutrition studies on prison inmates?

regardless of moral issues, generally speaking, effective nutritional research is not done (much) because it is not a priority for the primary funders of science.

Contraband items make their way into prisons. Control of food would still not be 100%!

As long as it was good for the inmates. Which could be possible.

That's why info from Weston Price is valuble. These cultures had very controlled diets. They didn't perform formal scientific experiments, but they arrived at their particular diets by informal experimentation century after century. If their conclusions were wrong, they wouldn't survive.

Prison inmates have tried to sue the Illinois state government for putting soy in their food. WAP has been trying to raise money to fund legal action.

http://www.infiniteunknown.net/2010/06/04/how-to-destroy-the-health-of-prisoners-soy-diet/

It would probably be better to recruit a bunch of OCD orthorexics like us who would definitely strictly adhere to the given protocol.

In this film they mention that prison inmates who had had a sugar restricted diet while in prison were less likely to show up again in less than 1 year:

Before Lustig's Bitter Truth - The Sugar Trap - 1986 - 1 of 6 - Documentary

So there must have been some research done...

I am hopelessly addicted to all the prison reality shows on TV right now, Nat Geo's "Hard Time" is my favorite. They have a black market scam selling/trading commissary items for goods and services. The preferred commodities are junk food--chips, twinkies, etc... But, if you look at them as a whole, they are lean and mean and workout a lot. They are mostly well-muscled and ripped. According to CW and PW, they are getting at least 1g protein per pound of LBM. That means they must be eating tons of meat, but somehow I doubt it. I wish they would do an entire episode on prison nutrition. I'd love to see what these guys eat--they usually just show them in the chowhall with a tray containing what looks like mystery meat, green beans, and a slice of bread. If I were the prison warden, I'd feed them SAD all the way--heavy on the wheat, low on the meat. That way you'd have a chubby, listless bunch of guys to guard vs. a crowded cage of wild animals.

I think something similar has been done before, with promising results:

http://evolutionarypsychiatry.blogspot.com/2011/04/diet-and-violence.html

In this study, 231 (young, male, adult, prisoner) volunteers agreed to receive a daily vitamin, mineral, and essential fatty acid supplementation or placebo. The average length of the supplementation was about 142 days, and a number of measures were taken before and during the active phase, including psychological testing, reports of violent acts, and reports of disciplinary action. Prisoners were randomized in part based on baseline disciplinary status and their progress in the "prison regime."in the "prison regime."

The results? The average number of "disciplinary incidents per 1000 person-days" dropped > from 16 to 10.4 in the active group (p<0.001), which is a 35% reduction, whereas the placebo group only dropped by 6.7%. Especially violent incidents in the active group dropped by 37%, and in the placebo group only 10.1%.

Granted, this wan't a complete dietary overhall, but rather instead supplementation with a multivitamin and omega fatty acids. Still, I found it to be very fascinating and very exciting.

:D

There have been a number of "closed ward" studies on various diets (If you haven't read Dr. Cordain's book he summarizes a number of them in it) on diet and nutrition. In a closed ward situation participants are confined in a hospital-esque situation where they can be monitored at all times by doctors and experimenters.

Well, Colpo vs. Eades metabolic advantage debate involved a lot of talk about psychiatric hospital studies.